APPRECIATION OF FERNS 301 



The power of travelling unseen might be used at 

 times for some beneficent purpose, as when Santa 

 Claus sallies forth on his kindly Christmas mission ; 

 but more ordinarily the man who desired the gift of 

 invisibility would be somewhat closely questioned 

 as to what mischief to his neighbours he was 

 planning, and his sudden uncanny disappearance 

 would give rise to some little uneasiness in his 

 circle. 



The lady fern is no less welcome in our rock- 

 garden, though we find, our subsoil being sand, 

 that its more delicate character than that of the 

 male fern causes it to brown off earlier in the 

 season than we quite approve. It is very common 

 and very charming. It is singular that the study 

 and appreciation of ferns is of very recent growth. 

 One finds in Cowper, Shenstone, and some others 

 of our native poets little or no reference to them, 

 and a very notable illustration of this neglect is 

 seen in the writings of Gilpin, a life-long dweller in 

 that paradise of ferns, the New Forest, who did 

 much to foster a taste for Nature, and who yet 

 regards the ferns as scarcely worthy of notice, and, 

 indeed, classes them with " thorns and briers and 

 other hedge trumpery." Scott and the Lake poets, 

 however, do them justice. The former, with 

 admirable truth to Nature, refers to the bracken on 

 the great hill slopes, and alludes in "Waverley" 

 to 



