214 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



similarity to common vegetable forms ; and their broad 

 wing-like leaves or fronds are the conspicuous orna 

 ments of wet woods and solitary pastures which are 

 unvisited by the plough. By their singular appearance 

 we are reminded of the primitive forms of vegetation 

 on the earth's surface, and of the luxuriant productions 

 of the tropics. In places where they are abundant, the 

 hellebore, with its erect stem and prim foliage, towers 

 above the low shrubbery, and the purple sarracenia rears 

 its nodding flowers, like some strange visitant from an 

 other clime. 



The ferns are for the most part a coarse tribe of 

 plants, having more beauty in their forms than in their 

 texture. In temperate latitudes it is only their leaf or 

 frond that is conspicuous, their stems being either pros 

 trate or subterranean. Yet in some of the species 

 nothing can be more beautiful than the ramifications 

 of their fronds. In their arrangements we may observe 

 a perfect harmony and regularity, without the formality 

 that marks the compound leaves of other plants. 

 Herein nature affords an example of a compound 

 assemblage of parts, in a pleasing uniformity that far 

 exceeds the most ingenious devices of art. Apparently 

 similar arrangements are seen" in the leaves of the 

 poison hemlock, the milfoil, and the Roman worm 

 wood ; but their formality is not so beautifully blended 

 with variety as that of the compound-leaved ferns. 



In tropical countries some of the ferns are woody 

 plants, attaining the size of trees, rising with a branch 

 less trunk over fifty feet in height, and then spreading 

 out their leaves like a palm tree. Hence they are singu 

 larly attractive objects to the traveller from the north, 

 by the sight of which he seems to be carried back to 

 the early ages of the world, before the human race had 



