The Garden in Spring 



adaptable, both wild and under cultivation. In 

 damp woods it will throw up fronds two or 

 three feet in length ; in sunny walls it is as 

 small and bushy as our English Rue-fern. 

 The Hare's Foot {Davallia Canariensis)^ which 

 is a native of this island and the Canaries, but 

 was introduced to Europe two centuries ago, 

 grows freely in any situation. 



The inhabitants of Funchal and its suburbs 

 have an exasperating habit of plastering their 

 walls and whitewashing them, so that no fern 

 can grow in their chinks. But in the western 

 quarter of the town there still remains a frag- 

 ment of the great wall built after the invasion 

 of the French freebooters in 1566. This has 

 escaped both demolition and plaster, and it 

 is the home of a very curious woolly fern, 

 Notoclaena lanuginosa y which seems to revel in 

 the hardest mortar. Like many ferns which 

 live on walls in sunny situations, it shrivels 

 up in dry weather, but is very fine after rain. 

 Other ferns of similar habit may be found in un- 

 plastered walls, especially in the hills to the west- 

 ward of the town, and at an altitude of seven 

 or eight hundred feet. The common Spleen- 

 wort is one of these, and with it sometimes 



iSi 



