PRO11P VI F E R TILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE 

 AND USUALLY SIMILAR; FRUIT-DOTS ROUND 



Fern flourishes throughout the winter. In one of 

 the October entries in his journal, Thoreau records 

 his satisfaction in the endurance of the hardy ferns : 

 " Now they are conspicuous amid the withered 

 leaves. You are inclined to approach and raise each 

 frond in succession, moist, trembling, fragile green- 

 ness. They linger thus in all moist, clammy swamps 

 under the bare maples and grapevines and witch 

 hazels, and about each trickling spring that is half 

 choked with fallen leaves. What means this per- 

 sistent vitality ? Why were these spared when the 

 brakes and osmundas were stricken down ? They 

 stay as if to keep up the spirits of the cold-blooded 

 frogs which have not yet gone into the mud, that 

 the summer may die with decent and graceful mod- 

 eration. Is not the water of the spring improved 

 by their presence? They fall back and droop here 

 and there like the plumes of departing summer, of 

 the departing year. Even in them I feel an argu- 

 ment for immortality. Death is so far from being 

 universal. The same destroyer does not destroy 

 all. How valuable they are, with the lycopodiums, 

 for cheerfulness. Greenness at the end of the year, 

 after the fall of the leaf, a hale old age. To my eye 

 they are tall and noble as palm-groves, and always 

 some forest nobleness seems to have its haunt under 

 their umbrage. All that was immortal in the swamp 

 herbage seems here crowded into smaller compass, 

 the concentrated greenness of the swamp. How dear 

 they must be to the chickadee and the rabbit! the cool, 

 slowly retreating rear-guard of the swamp army." 



177 



