138 



THE AQUARIUM, OCTOBER, 1894. 



not trouble ourselves about any of these; 

 the simplest, most easily obtained and 

 best, is ordinary leaf mould from the 

 woods, mixed with a little sand ; in this 

 any fern will flourish. When the plants 

 fill these little pots with roots they must 

 be shifted to others only one size larger, 

 and so on until the full grown speci- 

 men occupies a pot proportionate to its 

 size. The mistake generally made by 

 beginners is to use pots too large for 

 the plants. When the roots of a plant, 

 particularly such a moisture loving 

 plant as a fern, are confined, they must 



Seedling op Maiden's Hair Fern. 



(P. P.) The primordial scale ; (W. h.) roots ; (b) 

 plant. Thirty times enlarged. (After I. Sachs.) 



fill the pot and permeate the whole ball 

 of earth, otherwise there is danger of 

 the soil becoming sour, causing the 

 roots to rot, and the plant to languish 

 and die. The size of the pot must be 

 in proportion to that of the plant. 



Now place the pots in a position 

 where they will have an abundance of 

 light but no direct sunshine, and keep 

 them in a uniform state of moisture. 

 But how can this be done, you ask. If 

 you set them on a table and water them, 

 no matter how thoroughly, evaporation 

 goes on, not only from the surface of 

 the soil, but also from the sides of the 

 porous pots, and in a few hours the 

 little ball of earth will dry out, and 



shrink from the sides of the pot, leav- 

 ing a space through which the water 

 will run out the next time you give a 

 supply, and the fern will droop and 

 soon perish from drought. Nor will it 

 do to set them in saucers of water, for 

 that will sour the earth, rot the roots 

 and kill the plants just as surely as 

 drought. Ferns are very impatient of 

 standing water. Set the j^o^s on a 

 moderately thick layer of sand or moss, 

 which can be kept wet to compensate 

 for the waste caused by evaporation 

 from the sides of the pots, and also to 

 supjjly moisture to the air of the apart- 

 ment. A dry atmosphere is just as det- 

 rimental to the growth of ferns as a dry 

 soil. A very pretty and efficient way 

 is to procure a wooden box as wide and 

 long as your table, and deep enough to 

 hide the pots. The ends and sides may 

 be painted or otherwise ornamented to 

 suit your taste. In this box fit a zinc 

 pan about an inch deep, and fill it with 

 sand ; upon the sand j^lace a layer of 

 moss thick enough to raise the bottoms 

 of the pots above the rim of the pan. 

 When the pots are placed upon this 

 moss, if you happen to give too much 

 water it cannot drown the plants, 

 because it will run over in the pan and 

 can be drained into a vessel beneath, to 

 protect your carpet. If the evaporation 

 from the moss and sand does not fur- 

 nish sufficient moisture to the air of the 

 room, to keep the plants in a fresh and 

 vigorous state, some means must be 

 adopted to increase it. If you have a 

 stove, keep a vessel of water on it; if a 

 furnace or open grate, a shallow dish of 

 wet moss or sponges placed under the 

 fern stand will answer the purpose. 

 This is the winter treatment. When the 

 warm weather comes your plants Avant 

 more of the outside air, the Avindows 

 must be opened more or less, and later 



