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disappears at earliest dawn there is no chance 

 for most people to see if this be so or not. If 

 only one could be fortunate to find one of these 

 and gather it we are assured that it would point 

 to hidden treasure and guide us to wealth untold. 

 Another old fancy was that burning of the bracken 

 brought on heavy rain. When Charles I. would 

 journey into Staffordshire he caused a letter to be 

 written in advance to the sheriff of the county 

 strictly forbidding that during his sojourn therein 

 any fern should be burnt, while in the West Country 

 if one would be free from toothache a whole year 

 a distinctly desirable thing they must bite off close 

 to the ground the first fern frond that a Spring 

 search reveals to them. 



The best all-round fern for the rock-garden is, 

 we think, the common male fern, so called popu- 

 larly to distinguish it from the yet more graceful 

 lady fern. The Greeks and Romans believed that 

 fern produced no seed ; other plants they saw 

 flowered and fruited, but the reproduction of the 

 ferns by means of its spores was a mystery to 

 them. Later on it was held that ferns must surely 

 have seed of some kind, but that it was invisible ; 

 so our ancestors reasoned out the fantastic idea 

 that if one could but gather this seed they, too, 

 would become possessed of the power to become 

 invisible. Butler, in one of his satires, compares a 

 parasite of the court to " fern, that vile un-useful 



