INTRODUCTION. 9 



some of our larger towns and cities, where ferns were formerly 

 abundant, not one is now to be found, except perchance the 

 Bracken. The hawker, the exchange-club botanist, and the 

 town amateur gardener have been largely responsible for this 

 condition of things, and now we have an additional menace in 

 the multiplication of Nature-Study classes, which in some cases 

 might be more fitly named Nature-Suppression classes, for 

 the main outcome of their efforts is the destruction of many 

 thousands of specimens. The series of books to which this 

 volume belongs has been designed to spread true Nature-study 

 and we believe has largely succeeded in that ambition but 

 we should deeply deplore if it has added to the number of those 

 who collect specimens for the mere joy of acquisition, without 

 troubling to make themselves acquainted with the natural 

 history of their specimens. 



For many years we have taught that where ferns are 

 wanted for ornamenting a rock-garden or greenhouse, there is 

 a much better, though a slower, plan than that of stripping a 

 woodland bank to acquire the plants. It is a plan that can be 

 carried out anywhere, in restricted space, with simple appliances 

 and inexpensively, though for purposes of real Nature-study 

 nothing can surpass it. That plan is the home-breeding of 

 ferns from spores. A walk in ferny places will furnish 

 material from which you may raise many thousands of graceful 

 plants with which to furnish your own and your friends' fern 

 gardens. All you need is to take a few envelopes with you, 

 and when you come across a fern examine the backs of the 

 fronds for sori. Carefully remove a frond or part of a frond that 

 bears the spore-heaps, and enclose it in an envelope, on which 

 you should note the name of the species and the date. By this 

 means fern-collecting may be pursued without unduly interfering 



