A SUMMER AT HOME. 223 



and yet should be so easily fooled by the lazy cow- 

 bunting. 



July 31. — There is something delightfully cool and 

 refreshing in the very mention of fern-clad nooks ; but 

 the coolness and all that, which wooes you thither, has 

 a charm for a few mosquitoes and a bloodthirsty gnat, 

 which for persistent persecution exceeds the former, so 

 it is not always a bed of roses upon which you recline, 

 if you seek a shady retreat among ferns. 



But there are ferns and ferns ; some, lovers of swamps ; 

 others, content with a little dampness, and growing 

 where the rambler may go dry-shod. There are twenty 

 species, at least, of these pretty plants, and I wandered 

 into a dense cluster of the largest of them all to-daj'. 

 It is the bracken, and as I stood I drew their waving 

 tops above my head, and was completely hidden. All 

 was deeply, darkly, beautifully green, and the rippling 

 of the brook, near by, added to the coolness of the nook. 

 Dry, dusty, and parched midsummer was, for the time, 

 forgotten. 



This bracken is a common fern ; but several others 

 are as prominent features of the damper parts of the 

 woods. Leaving the bracken, I had to walk scarcely 

 one hundred yards to find cinnamon fern in abundance. 

 I^ot so stately, it is true, but yet nothing insignificant 

 about it ; and now it is seen at its best. The fruit pani- 

 cle, a vigorous growth, with a curiously curled end, dot- 

 ted with sporangia and clothed with a bright cinnamon- 

 colored wool, is the more beautiful for the setting of 

 dark green that surrounds it late in May. 



