FERN TRIBE 149 
and hair-like, as to have gained for the fern its specific name. Its slender 
creeping rhizome is shaggy, with black hair-like scales, and the base of the 
stipes is of a rich red-brown colour. The fronds, which grow in lax tufts, 
make their appearance about May, and are matured by June: they are 
usually about six or seven, but sometimes twelve inches in height. They 
are either twice or thrice pinnate. The pinne, or branches, diverge alter- 
nately from the stalks; the little leaf-like pinnules are also alternate, and 
each is placed on a separate stalk. The form of the leaflets, though varying 
much in different situations, is yet more or less fan-shaped, the terminal one 
being often wedge-shaped. The margin is lobed, the barren lobes are 
serrated, but the edges of the fertile lobes are turned under, and thus form 
a membrane-like indusium to the clusters of fructification. The stalk is 
usually about half the length of the frond, and is glossy black, or deep purple. 
The veins in all the pinnules are two-branched or forked from the base, the 
branches extending in straight lines to the margins, where in the barren 
fronds they end in the marginal notches. In the fertile fronds, however, 
they extend into the indusium, and become the receptacle for the clusters. 
The bright cheerful evergreen tint, the elegant form and lightly waving 
attitudes of this fern, render it very attractive ; and when growing against 
the sides of the sea-rock or any moist place in any abundance, no fern 
exceeds it in beauty. Sir William Hooker remarks that this most delicate 
plant is very abundant in the south of Europe, where he has seen it lining 
the inside of wells, as it does the basin of the fountain at Vaucluse, with a 
tapestry of the tenderest green. It grows, sometimes, even on rocks washed 
occasionally by the spray. It is not a Scottish fern, but occurs on the south 
and west coasts of Ireland in great luxuriance ; in the Burren, Co. Clare, it 
attains a length of two feet. It is also plentiful in some spots in Wales, the 
Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands, but the only English localities for it 
are Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, and Shropshire. Mr. N. B. Ward 
sent specimens of the Maiden-hair to Mr. Newman from the neighbourhood 
of Ilfracombe, where he found it growing in great beauty on the face of the 
crevices of a rock in White Pebble Bay, in a dense mass, which commenced 
at the height of about twenty-five feet, and descended to within about five 
feet of the level of the sea. It prefers a perpendicular surface. It is a 
native of almost all tropical lands. Few ferns would be more graceful 
adornments to the sides of streams and pools, were it not so easily injured 
by the frost in exposed situations ; though in the Wardian case its green- 
ness is to be seen as well in the depth of winter as in the summer. The 
surface of the frond is always so smooth that water runs from it. Pliny had 
observed this, for he says, ‘In vain you plunge the Adiantum in water ; it 
always remains dry.” 
The fronds of this fern have, from earliest times, been used in this 
country as a remedy in pulmonary complaints. They yield, when boiling 
water is poured on them, some degree of mucilage, and emit at the same time 
a slight odour. That ancient writing known as the Arundel MS. says of this 
plant: ‘It mundifyeth the lunges, and the breste, and caccheth out wykede 
materes in hem;” while from the same authority we learn that “ Margery 
perles wastyn and fordon and cacchen out of the body wykede humours.” 
