CROUP IV FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE AND SIMILAR ; 

 SPORANGIA ON OR BENEATH A REFLEXED MARGIN 



with original thoughts? If the fragrance of the 

 Dicksonia fern is so grateful and suggestive to us, 

 how much more refreshing and encouraging, recre- 

 ating, would be fresh and fragrant thoughts com- 

 municated to us from a man's experience ? I want 

 none of his pity nor sympathy in the common sense, 

 but that he should emit and communicate to me his 

 essential fragrance . . . going a-huckleberrying 

 in the fields of thought, and enriching all the world 

 with his vision and his joys." 



In connection with this fern Thoreau indulges in 

 one of those whimsical, enchanting disquisitions 

 with the spirit of which you are in complete accord, 

 even though you may seem to contradict the letter : 



" It is only when we forget all our learning that 

 we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's- 

 breadth to any natural object, so long as I presume 

 that I have an introduction to it from some learned 

 man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension, 

 I must for the thousandth time approach it as some- 

 thing totally strange. If you would make acquaint- 

 ance with the ferns, you must forget your botany. 

 Not a single scientific term or distinction is the 

 least to the purpose. You would fain perceive 

 something, and you must approach the object to- 

 tally unprejudiced. You must be aware that noth- 

 ing is what you have taken it to be. In what book 

 is this w arid and its beauty described ? Who has 

 plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty ? 

 You must be in a different state from common. 



Your greatest success will be simply to perceive 



1x8 



