FERNS. 37 



wondrous beauty of effect, may be learnt from the hum- 

 blest fern, and is developed by the reflecting or refracting 

 such rays of light as visit his lone resting-place. 



" My place is not where art exults to raise the tender flower, 

 By terraced walk, or deck'd parterre, or fenced and sheltered bower, 

 Nor where, the straightly-levelled walks of tangled boughs between, 

 The sunbeam lights the velvet sward, and streams through alleys green. 



My dwelling is the desert heath, the wood, the haunted dell, 

 And where the wild deer stoops to drink beside the mossy well, 

 And by the lake with trembling stars bestud when earth is still, 

 And midnight's melancholy pomp is on the distant hill." 



Rollings. 



Listen, said the scaly hart's-tongue, I too can speak of 

 a prescribed range. The Emerald Isle, where my brother, 

 the lordly bracken, grows profusely, does not own me ; in 

 Ireland I am rarely seen ; throughout this country only in 

 the south-western counties. My natural habitat is the 

 fissures of dry rocks, or walls, for my brown and scaly roots 

 possess the property of readily penetrating through the 

 smallest opening. Hence, our tribe are seen on the bold 



