FERNS. 29 



ing household utensils. The ashes of these plants 

 have been found by chemists to contain half their 

 weight of silica. Horse-tails and their allies of the 

 ditches are not far removed from FERNS, to which 

 great tribe I now lead you." 



" I should not have thought it a great tribe/' 

 said Henry, "for we see very few ferns in our 

 walks, compared with other plants." 



" That is true ; but we must not always judge 

 of a whole tribe of plants by what our own neigh- 

 bourhood, or even our own country affords. Ferns 

 in this country are leafy plants, with stems that 

 mostly creep along the surface of the earth, or 

 hide themselves beneath it ; but in tropical coun- 

 tries there are tree ferns, whose leafless trunks 

 rise to the height of thirty or forty feet., and send 

 out an elegant tuft of foliage at the top. And 

 although many of our woods and hedgebanks, as 

 well as our rocks and old walls, are ornamented 

 with very beautiful kinds of fern, yet these are 

 not to be compared to the ferns of the tropics for 

 number or variety. The island of Jamaica alone 

 is said to contain at least four times as many 

 different species as the whole of Great Britain, 

 and some of them growing to a majestic height." 



