FERNS AS A HOBBY 



for help. Finally I learned that a book on the sub- 

 ject, written " for young people," was in existence, 

 and I asked my mother to buy it for me. The re- 

 quest was gratified promptly and I plodded through 

 the preliminary matter of " How Plants Grow " to 

 find that I was quite unable to master the key, and 

 that any knowledge of the flowers that could appeal 

 to my child-mind was locked away from me as hope- 

 lessly as before. Even though my one expressed 

 wish had been so gladly met, I did not confide to 

 others my perplexity, but surrendered sadly a cher- 

 ished dream. Owing largely, I believe, to the re- 

 action from this disappointment, it was many years 

 before I attempted again to wrestle with a botan- 

 ical key, or to learn the names of the flowers. 



How much was lost by yielding too easily to dis- 

 couragement I not only realize now, but I realized 

 it partially during the long period when the plants 

 were nameless. Among the flowers whose faces 

 were familiar though their names were unknown, I 

 felt that I was not making the most of my oppor- 

 tunities. And when I met plants which were both 

 new and nameless, I was a stranger indeed. In the 

 English woods and along the lovely English rivers, 

 by the rushing torrents and in the Alpine meadows 

 of Switzerland, on the mountains of Brazil, I should 

 have felt myself less an alien had I been able then 

 as now to detect the kinship between foreign and 

 North American plants, and to call the strangers by 

 names that were at least partially familiar. 



To the man or woman who is somewhat at home 



4 



