6o HISTORY OF C OH AS SET, 



ground pine, which is gathered every year to make Christ- 

 mas wreaths and festoons. 



In the coal beds of Scotland some fossil forms of these 

 lycopods of gigantic size have been identified ; but the 

 lycopods of Cohasset were the same small variety as 

 now, in those early post-glacial days thousands of years 

 before Christmas days or Christmas decorations were 

 thought of. 



The coming of the ferns needed not to be delayed long 

 after the mosses, for the rock fern buries its root snugly 

 under them and sets up its business of weaving fronds and 

 scattering spores for more vegetable growth. 



Brakes and maidenhairs and polypodies found the soil 

 more congenial than the rocks for their growth. The ferns 

 are the first we have yet considered which root themselves 

 into the ground for nourishment. It was a new experience 

 for the clay or rock flour of these drumlins when it first 

 was wedged apart by the rootlet of a fern seeking the 

 juices of life for its fronds. 



Undisturbed for many years, those heaps of rock flour 

 had lain after the ice mill had made them. The gases of 

 the air had been slowly reddening the clay and preparing 

 it for vegetation. 



Now after the mould had formed upon it the spores of 

 ferns, brought by the wind, could germinate there and grow 

 into a little green scale wherever the dampness was right. 

 On the under surface of these scales little hairs clutched 

 the mould, and upon the upper surface grew little cells, 

 some of which had the power to grow into a fern if they 

 were touched by others of a different kind. When these 

 "eggs" or "seeds" upon the top of the scale began to 

 grow, then roots of the simplest order began to pierce our 

 hillsides and plains. From that day onwards the drumlins 

 and plains have been unable to shake off their garment of 

 vegetation. The ferns have multiplied in as many as 

 twenty different varieties. 



