THE STRUCTURE OF FERNS. 



BUT our young readers will be ready to ask, What is a Pern ? 

 This we will now endeavour to explain by means of a 

 familiar comparison, 



It is presumed that every reader of this little book, even 

 the youngest, can recognize a flower, not indeed by the aid 

 of the somewhat technical intricacies to which the man of 

 science would resort, but by means of that intuitive per- 

 ception, which has grown up with the growing faculties and 

 acquired strength from the little experiences of childhood 

 and youth. We. will suppose, then, that all our readers are 

 familiar with natural productions such as the buttercup, the 

 poppy, the brier-rose, the daisy, the dandelion, and others 

 such as these, which are so profusely dispersed over the 

 meadows and corn-fields, and along the hedge-rows, and by 

 the way-sides : even the young ears of corn and the spikes 

 of meadow grasses must be well-remembered objects. Now, 

 these all afford examples of flowers, or of masses of flowers. 

 But then the plants from which the daisy heads and 



