50 PELL^A ATROPURPUREA. DARK PURPLE ROCK-BRAKE. 



A tuft of seeded fern I see thee plunge, 

 Tinted with golden green, for there a sunbeam 

 Strays through thy arch of shade." 



This pretty sketch would have been tame Indeed without the 

 help of the "seeded fern," which, by the aid of the straggling sun- 

 beam, gave the golden green to the waters and at the same 

 time the chief central point to the poet's picture. Most of us have 

 pleasant remembrances of sylvan scenes, in which some graceful 

 fern has taken what we might almost term a loving part. But 

 all ferns are not like these. There are some which, if we may 

 borrow a Shakespearian image of human things, are so delicately 

 nurtured that they are only fitted to 



" Caper nimbly in a lady's chamber, 

 To the lascivious pleading of a lute," 



while there are others again who rather delight in 



" Mounting barbed steeds, 

 To fright the souls of fearful adversaries." 



Our present species, Pellcra afropurptura, is one of these 

 brave courageous species. It does not grow in the rich soil of 

 shaded woods, or seek the advantages of cooling streams ; but 

 boldly takes to the clefts of exposed rocks, or covers with its 

 blue-green fronds the faces of dry and ruined walls. In such 

 situations it often grows with a luxuriance truly surprising. 

 Soon after the termination of the civil war, the writer was col- 

 lecting plants among the smoked ruins of Harper's Ferry in Vir- 

 ginia, and these were covered with this fern, often with fronds 

 ten inches long. Indeed it seems to prefer to associate itself 

 with mortar, and the mural works of man. The abutments of 

 the bridges across the Susquehanna river at Harrisburg were 

 formerly covered with it, and may probably be so clothed still. 

 In a wild condidon it seems to prefer limestone rocks, though it 

 is by no means confined to them. It grows luxuriandy in the 

 soapstone quarries on the Schuylkill river above Philadelphia. 

 Other observers have noted that it does well elsewhere than on 



