FEEN CULTURE 297 



beauty it must have full room to expand untouched 

 by any other plant, the graceful radiation of the 

 fronds forming its crowning beauty. One of our 

 Osmunda ferns measured across from tip to tip 

 fifty-six inches, so that this one fern, growing 

 equally in all directions, claims a circle of ground 

 of fourteen feet circumference, but it is abundantly 

 worth it. 



While most ferns fail to thrive if exposed to 

 strong sunshine, it is important that they should 

 receive due share of light and air. Ferns, as a 

 whole, are in a special degree shade- and moisture- 

 loving, yet the amount of each varies so in different 

 species that it is useless to attempt to give any 

 one cultural formula. They are not lovers of cold 

 draughts, and must be sheltered from strong wind. 



Ferns should be removed during the autumn and 

 winter, in the interval between the dying down of 

 the old fronds and the unrolling of the new. While 

 some of our species are evergreen others are 

 deciduous ; and though these latter are lost to us 

 for awhile, their reappearance as they gradually 

 unfold is one of the most welcome indications that 

 the Spring has at last come, that Nature is 

 awakening. 



The brake, or bracken, the commonest of all our 

 ferns, that clothes our commons and open wood- 

 lands lavishly with its graceful leafage, is the only 

 one that has any economic value. We read in 



