144 THE BOOK OF THE OPEN AIR 



at that time, nowadays ? Although chance of discovering striking new 

 the delight of the enthusiast, these forms exist, and it is this ever-present 

 formidable tomes are far too technical possibility which forms their great 

 for most of us. We must own to a fascination for the collector. In the 

 considerable sympathy with the plant- case of, let us say, butterflies' or birds' 

 lover as totally distinct from the eggs it may not take very long entirely 

 systematic botanist. Some years ago to exhaust the collecting possibilities 

 there appeared a book about ferns (The of a district. With ferns, however, it 

 Fern Paradise, by F. G. Heath), written is very different, they are provokingly 

 in quite another manner. The experts shy of discovery, and however thor- 

 shook their heads, and they are still oughly the hunting-grounds may be 

 shaking them, but the fact remains ransacked one year, the hope still re- 

 that its popularity has been consider- mains of there being interesting vari- 

 able, etal novelties among the next year's 

 It is in our opinion a nice point crop. Some ferns are vastly more 

 whether it is strictly right to add to prone to variation than are others. 

 the ravages effected by the plant For example, while in text-books to the 

 hawker in even the smallest degree, description of the Alpine and mountain 

 but, undoubtedly, our native ferns offer bladder ferns, the woodsias and others 

 a rich field for the collector. This is the simple statement "no varieties are 

 not only because the number of distinct recorded " is appended, the description 

 species (forty-five) is fairly large, but is of the four hundred or so varieties of 

 in a greater degree occasioned by the the hart's tongue fern (Scolopendrium 

 truly remarkable tendency to sport, vulgare), which having in the type form 

 and afford well-defined distinct varieties a single undivided frond would not be 

 which ferns exhibit both under natural thought to offer much scope for varia- 

 and cultivated conditions. At a tion, occupies many pages. The main 

 moderate estimate there are nearly types of variation in the British species 

 2,000 generally accepted varieties of are : (i) Crestation, a multiplication of 

 the British ferns, and while many of some or all of the extremities of the 

 these have been raised from spores, a fronds and their subdivisions ; (2) 

 considerable number have been dis- Plumation, a remarkably delicate divi- 

 covered growing wild. So long as sion and growth of the ultimate sections 

 ferns grow in a wild state will the of the frond, or a greater foliaceous 



