298 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



Tusser's quaint old book, "The Fiue Hundred 

 Pointes of Good Husbandrie," how the farmer is 

 admonished to 



"Get home with the brake, 

 To brue with and bake, 

 To cover the shed, 

 Drie over the hed," 



and we still see its value appreciated by the 

 cottager and farmer of to-day. It makes a fierce 

 fire for the bakehouse, an excellent covering for the 

 hovel, a very useful litter in the cowshed, and a 

 thick layer of it is often the foundation on which 

 the hayrick or cornstack is reared. The brake 

 grows to a very considerable height, and when it 

 has once established itself may, in the rock-garden, 

 grow a little exacting. We only arrive at its 

 possession as a reward of our perseverance, and 

 after some measure of disappointment. Such, at 

 least, is our personal experience, and it does not 

 stand alone. Unless, when we are seeking to 

 transfer it from the woodland to our garden, we 

 dig up a very goodly portion of its deeply rooting 

 creeping stem our labour is in vain. It is very 

 easy to get up a small piece and march off with 

 it happily enough, but the result is only dis- 

 appointment. 



There is an old belief that the bracken produces 

 a small blue bell-flower at midnight on September 

 29th, the great Feast of St. Michael, but, as this 



