1 9 THE SWAN AND HER CREW. 



the common bracken, for instance with their many divisions 

 all partially unrolled, is often highly curious. 



But in this I am proceeding too far. The first crop of fronds, 

 even in those kinds which when mature are most deeply cut, 

 are usually very simple in form almost or wholly undivided. 



This fact is often a source of great confusion to beginners. 

 I well remember two perplexities of the kind in which I was 

 involved during the earlier season of my attention to this 

 subject. 



Growing upon a rock by the roadside, I found a small fern, 

 more exquisitely beautiful than any I had seen before. I 

 gathered and preserved it, but for many months was wholly 

 puzzled as to its nature. Fancies arose that I was the happy 

 discoverer of a new species, and what if Professor Lindley or 

 Sir William Hooker were to name it after me Asplenium, or 

 Polystichum, or something else, Meredithii ? That would be 

 better .than a peerage. 



These were but fancies, and I was well pleased when further 

 experience for books helped me not at all showed that it 

 was a young plant of the common lady-fern. It was divided 

 once only into simple leaflets while the fully-developed 

 frond of the matured plant is one of the most highly subdivided 

 our islands can produce. 



When I began collecting ferns, I had not seen a specimen 

 of the rare holly-fern, and it was pardonable in me on finding 

 some fronds which evidently belonged to the shield fern 

 genus, and were divided into spiny leaflets only, to refer them 

 to this species and tell a friend that I had made a great dis- 

 covery. But on going to the same plant a year later, my 

 mistake was made plain, as the new fronds were much more 

 divided, and showed the plant to be of the common kind, the 

 prickly shield-fern. 



On the rocky sides of little Welsh and Highland rivers, 

 in glens where the sunlight seldom enters, complete series of 

 this fern in all its stages from the tiny simple leaf to the 

 deeply-cut and boldly-outlined frond of nearly three feet in 

 length may easily be obtained, and will beautifully illustrate 

 its varied and increasingly-divided forms. 



Some fronds of course, as* those of the graceful hart's- 

 tongue, are undivided even at maturity, except in occasional 

 instances in which, like creatures endowed with more sentient 



