CHAPAER VF. 
ABOUT A FERN. 
FERNS are among the most beautiful and graceful 
of Nature’s productions, especially when seen in their 
native haunts. To find these haunts we must seek 
out localities where moisture is abundant, but not 
stagnant ; in the woods, where the interlacing boughs, 
with their wealth of greenery, form a protecting awn- 
ing, through which the sun’s rays are sifted and 
robbed of their fierceness. Here in the subdued 
light—like the light that falls upon the cathedral 
floor, which in passing through the stained-glass 
windows brings their colours with it to the floor— 
here, exhibiting the most exquisite softness of tint and 
elegant drooping curves, they throw out their lace-like 
fronds, and fill the air with a fine aroma peculiarly 
their own. In such a spot, even the despised bracken 
of the scorched-up common, or the dusty roadside, is 
positively beautiful, and one of the most graceful 
objects we wish to see. Or let us seek some deep 
secluded glen where rocks are piled on either side, 
with overhanging trees, whose leaves lend grateful 
shelter. Here, jutting out in myriads from the cre- 
vices of moss-covered boulders, and even from the 
mossy surface itself, large, bright-green arching 
