FERNS. 407 



difficulty of artificial restocking. There is then no alternative 

 but to take up these plants in sods, beat off, in sitti, all the soil 

 attached to their roots, and remove them. The cowberry plant 

 is also the host of a fungus that attacks silver-fir (p. 419). 

 Planting is better than sowing where bilberries prevail, and 

 spruce is the best species to plant on soil that produces them. 

 V. ulighiosum, L., is found on swampy land and mountain- 

 tops, and the cranberry (T'. Oxycoccos, L.) in patches on 

 peaty soils. Both species are unimportant to the forester. 



7. Ferns. 



The commoner kinds of ferns found in forests are : Poly- 

 2)odium vuUjare, L,, Beech fern {P. Phccjopteris, L.), Male 

 fern {Nephrodium Filix-mas., Hooker), Lady fern {Aspleniuni 

 Filix-faemina , Bentham), and Bracken {Pteris aquilina, L.). 



The above prefer damp and stony ground, and their 

 appearance denotes a fertile soil, as well as a slight opening 

 out of the leaf-canopy. They spread above and below ground 

 often to the prejudice of young forest plants, by causing 

 excessive moisture, and depriving them of light, and by being 

 pressed down on them in a rotting state in winter by the 

 snow. This frequently kills lightdemanders. Bracken often 

 covers wide stretches of deep sandy land, but its sub- aerial 

 parts are extremely sensitive to frost. 



In the case of bracken, the best plan is to knock off the soft 

 young shoots in early summer, which can be done easily with 

 a stick before they have unrolled. This injures the rhizomes, 

 so that only weakly shoots are produced, which may be knocked 

 off or neglected. Dried bracken is largely used in England and 

 elsewhere for litter, and in the Forest of Dean, repeated early 

 cutting, in August, instead of October, has greatly weakened 

 the rhizomes of the plant, so that only a short weak crop is 

 produced, as compared with that in the Windsor and New 

 Forests, where it is cut later in the autumn. 

 Jr. Mosses. 



Two, out of 42 species of Polytrichum, are hurtful mosses 

 common in forests: Pob/tricJuini commune, L., and P. juniper- 

 inn m, Hedw. The former produces dense convex tufts in damp 

 places, and the latter on drier ground. These tufts may be 



