226 THE FLOEAL WORLD AND GAKDEN GUIDE. 



leverage of all small hand-tools. When ferns of large size are 

 taken up in the height of summer, it is best to cut away all or nearly 

 all their fronds at once, and use those fronds as packing material. 



On reaching home, the best treatment to subject them to is to 

 pot them all separately in tbe smallest pots their roots can he got 

 into, with cocoa-nut fibre alone, or the fibre of good peat or leaf- 

 mould, and shut them up in a frame, and keep only moderately 

 moist until they start iuto growth. As at this early stage of the 

 study we may suppose you do not know how to pot them and restore 

 their energies, we will endeavour to point out a simpler mode of 

 procedure. Find a very shady place in the garden, and there make 

 a bed of leaf-mould or peat-soil, or cocoa-nut fibre refuse, and plant 

 the ferns in it, as close together as possible. Then cover them with 

 hell-glasses or common hand-lights, and sprinkle them with water 

 every evening, hut take care not to make them very wet at the roots. 

 They will soon begin to grow. In the spring following you may 

 plant them in the fernery. 



Small ferns found growing on rocks and walls must always he 

 carefully dealt with. The little maidenhair spleenwort will some- 

 times send its black wiry roots quite through the substance of a 

 nine-inch or fourteen-inch wall, and to remove it with complete roots 

 is then quite out of the question. By loosening a portion of its 

 hold just below the crown of the plant, roots may generally be 

 obtained sufficient to enable it to re-establish itself under culti- 

 vation. A strong chisel and a hammer will be required in under- 

 takings of this sort, and it may be well to add a little discretion also, 

 especially as to the extent to which walls — the property of some- 

 body — are to he injured for the sake of a tuft of fern worth but a few 

 pence, and of wdiich specimens may be obtained more easily by further 

 search, without any necessity for the infliction of damage. Ferns 

 found growing on and amongst rocks should always, if possible, be 

 obtained with portions of the rock to which they are attached. If 

 this cannot be accomplished, carefully tear the plant from the rock 

 in a way to injure the roots as little as possible. Good pieces will 

 soon emit roots and fronds if properly treated, especially if kept 

 moist by packing in moss or sphagnum, from the first moment of 

 obtaining the specimen. Allow me to remark, further, that the 

 passion for fern collecting has in many instances been carried 

 to a ridiculous excess by persons who merit the title not of fern 

 collectors so much as fern destroyers. Let every genuine lover of 

 ferns be on his guard both to discourage reckless fern collecting-, 

 and to protect, as far as possible, the few remaining localities of 

 scarce British ferns. It is not many years since we saw amongst a 

 heap of dried mosses, ferns, grasses, etc., in the possession of a lady, 

 a sheet of Tunbridge fern nearly a yard square. This had been torn 

 from its native site, carefully rolled up like a piece of old blanket, 

 and put away, and was afterwards brought forth as a trophy, and 

 preserved as a memorial of the days " when we went gipsying." 

 The value of that sheet, when fresh, might have been about £5, and 

 no doubt any nurseryman could make a larger sum of a good square 

 yard of the Tunbridge fern. Such reckless destruction, such base 



