FERN TRIBE 151 
forming by its masses a rich verdant drapery to the wet rock, for it is only 
in places constantly moist that it can be found, the slightest exposure to 
drought withering its frail frond. Formerly it grew at Bingley, Yorks, and 
in recent years it has been found in Wales and the Isle of Arran, Scotland. 
It was in a mossy nook near Killarney, made greener by trickling waters, 
that a friend, who termed the nook the “ Birthplace of the Ferns,” and saw its 
matted fronds drooping among rocks, wrote for our volume the following lines: 
Beside a waterfall, where silvery mist, 
Even in summer, makes the noontide dim, 
Where clear brown shallow waters curl and twist 
Round moss-grown rocks tree-clasped by rootlets slim, 
Seated on stones that cumber sore the stream, 
Listening the tiny torrent’s whirl and dash, 
I Jove to dream a wildering noontide dream, 
Bright, swift, and changeful as the waters’ flash. 
Mark ye the ferns that clothe these dripping rocks, 
The crosier-headed ferns, most fresh and rare ; 
Their hair-like stalks, though trembling ‘neath the shocks 
Of falling spray-drops, rooted firmly there. 
What quaint varieties! The leaflets glow 
With a metallic lustre all their own, 
And velvet mosses, fostered by the flow, 
Gain a luxuriance elsewhere all unknown. 
It was owing to the occasional dryness of the atmosphere that, until the 
introduction of Mr. Ward’s closed cases, this fern withstood all attempts of 
the cultivator to rear it. If we take up any work on ferns written a few 
years prior to that invention, we find the author commenting on the absolute 
impossibility of domesticating the Bristle Fern as an ornamental plant, though 
in the glass cases it is now often to be seen, producing larger fronds than 
in its native locality, and by its green beauty delighting the eye of the 
dweller in the smoky town, or cheering the heart saddened by long sickness 
and absence from the scenes of Nature. In Mr. Ward’s interesting work on 
the growth of plants in closed cases—a little book honourable alike to the 
thoughtful intellect and kind heart of its writer—this gentleman says, that 
when making the experiments which led to his plan of glass cases, he was 
induced to commence with this, the most lovely of our flowerless plants, in con- 
sequence of its being the most intractable under ordinary culture; of its 
being, in fact, as he says, the “opprobriwm hortulanorum.” “ Loddiges,” says 
Mr. Ward, “who had it repeatedly, never could keep it alive; and Baron 
Fischer, the superintendent of the botanic establishment of the Emperor of 
Russia, when he saw the plant growing in one of my cases, took off his hat, 
made a low bow to it, and said: ‘You have been my master all the days of 
my life?” On some rock-work in Mr. Ward’s fern-house this plant produced 
fronds fifteen inches in height by seven or eight in breadth—one-fourth larger 
than uncultivated specimens, either from Killarney or elsewhere. 
The small portion of Trichomanes represented in the plate is part of a 
very interesting specimen given to Mr. Dickes by Mr. N. B. Ward. The 
latter gentleman, in a letter to the author, says of it: “Some years since, 
when I had the pleasure of visiting Killarney with Dr. Harvey, we deter- 
mined to find out, if possible, another locality for U'richémanes radicans ; and 
to this end directed the driver to convey us to some portion of the shores of 
