156 
Ow Lerns.* 
HERE are few pictures better calculated to arouse that love 
for Nature which exists in the human breast, than the 
sight of a rich bank of ferns. In a deep dell or a shady lane, 
where one has sought refuge from the ‘“‘ all conquering heat” of 
summer—where the slopes give forth to the eye a limpid green- 
ness—there the spirit of a botanist may be, and often has been, 
evoked. It was among the Devonshire lanes I first fell in 
love with ferns, and there are probably few places in England so 
well calculated to produce such an effect. On the slopes of the 
Blackdown hills—in roads cut through the humid sandstone, 
mosses and ferns reign supreme all the year round, and in winter 
are specially beautiful. The desire to know more of these green 
treasures soon extends itself, and is very readily gratified: ferns 
are easily prcserved, and the majority of them very easily culti- 
vated ; and a fern bank may be established in the garden with 
but very little trouble. 
Ferns belong to the class of plants called eryptogamia, from the 
fact that flowers are absent from them, the fructification being 
developed by another method: in the same class are mosses, 
lichens, algze, and fungi, Ferns and mosses belong to the higher 
cryptogamia, and have their mode of reproduction much more 
plainly apparent to the eye than seaweeds or fungi, but no 
flowers exist: the seeds, or as they are technically termed, the 
spores, of the former are scattered over the back of the leaf or 
frond; their mode of arrangement, and the presence or absence of 
a covering to them (called the indusiwm), afford good points of 
dissimilarity, which serve to separate them into families and 
genera. They reach their greatest perfection in warm moist 
atmospheres, and are found thus in the present day in New 
Zealand and similar climates, where they attain to the height of 
*Read before the Society at the Second Eyening Meeting (December 10, 
1867) of the Third Winter Session, 1866-7. 
A Ee Te 
_~  ee e eee 
ee) 
