THE FERN HOUSE. 109 
is certainly a curiosity: it neither requires soil nor 
water to grow in, but merely to be fastened upon a block 
of rustic wood, or it may be placed in a basket or 
seed-pan or pot. If grown in the first-named way, it 
should have a little moss and be tacked on to the 
block, or the pan or pot may be filled up tight with 
moss, and the plant tied on, and then suspended by 
a wire from the roof of the fernery or green-house, 
where it will grow for many years without any further 
trouble. This plant rather differs from the Polypody 
vulgare which we find growing so plentifully upon 
wood along the road sides, and which seems to draw 
its nourishment from the branch to which it adheres, 
while the Alcicorne lives upon its own natural resources. 
The Wall Rue or Asplenium Ruta-Muraria and 
Ceterach, which grow upon dry walls, are of this self- 
sustaining class, but there are none that seem capable 
of this so much as the first-named. 
To be successful in propagating Ferns, the house 
should be close, low and warm, having the walls 
lined with turfy peat-sods, the under side of which 
should be placed outermost and kept up either by long 
hook nails, or wall hooks, or by bars of wood fastened 
with hooks to the wall. Some moss may be stuffed 
between the joints of the sods, which will retain 
moisture and serve as receptacles for seed, which may 
be sown all over these sod-lined walls. The seed should 
be first well soaked with water by syringing, and then 
sown all over the walls and never disturbed afterwards. 
Neither should they be heavily syringed, for this would 
wash the seed off. Peat sods may also be placed under 
the seeding fronds which will catch the seed as it falls. 
To be successful in raising new sorts, gather the 
