WILDWOOD WAYS 



coiled in compact bundles there, ready to 

 unfold. 



From these rootstalks spring in all 

 directions slender underground runners 

 whence will grow new plants. But none 

 of this is visible. The only reminder of 

 that once luxurious thicket is the brittle, 

 brown stalks that still, here and there, 

 protrude from the fallen leaves. 



It is difficult to see w r here they all 

 went, but there is something savoring of 

 the supernatural about ferns, anyway. 

 Shakspeare says : " We have the receipt 

 of fern-seed; we walk invisible/' For 

 men to use this receipt the seed must be 

 garnered on St. John's eve in a white 

 napkin with such and such incantations 

 properly recited. The Struthiopteris ger- 

 manica had plenty of fern-seed on St. 

 John's eve. It must have used the old- 

 time incantations with success, for all the 

 72 



