FERNS AS A HOBBY 



sciously to the plaintive, long-drawn notes of the 

 wood-birds and the sharp " tsing " of the locusts, 

 breathing the mingled fragrance of the mint at your 

 feet and the pines and hemlocks overhead, you will 

 wonder vaguely why on summer days you ever 

 drive along the dusty high-road or eat indoors or do 

 any of the flavorless conventional things that con- 

 sume so large a portion of our lives. 



Of course what is true of other out-door studies is 

 true of the study of ferns. Constantly your curiosity 

 is aroused by some bird-note, some tree, some gor- 

 geously colored butterfly, and, in the case of ferns 

 especially, by some outcropping rock, which make 

 you eager to follow up other branches of nature- 

 study, and to know by name each tree and bird and 

 butterfly and rock you meet. 



The immediate result of these long happy days is 

 that " golden doze of mind which follows upon much 

 ixercise in the open air," the " ecstatic stupor " 

 which Stevenson supposes to be the nearly chronic 

 condition of " open-air laborers." Surely there is 

 no such preventive of insomnia, no such cure for 

 nervousness or morbid introspection as an absorb- 

 ing out-door interest. Body and mind alike are 

 invigorated to a degree that cannot be appreciated 

 by one who has not experienced the life-giving 

 power of some such close and loving contact with 

 nature. 



