Gbe jferns of tbe Wood. 193 



moments' stay an act of heroism. The best one can 

 do is to fill one's hands full of fronds, and run for 

 dear life. But the spoil is well worth the venture. 



If 1 could count upon the patience of the reader, I 

 should love dearly to tell of the annexes to the 

 fernery ; one of them under a rocky bank, at the 

 other end of this swampy wood, where the walking- 

 fern creeps and roots itself in company with the tiny 

 spleenwort ; another on the hillside, half a mile far- 

 ther on, where the maidenhair still grows abundantly, 

 having escaped the plundering hand of the spoiler ; 

 or of that mountain forest, four miles off, as the crow 

 flies, on whose crags and ledges the deep shades of 

 the evergreen wood-fern, Dryopteris marginale, draw 

 the eye and the hand of the climber, and where as 

 soon as the ascent begins the common polypody 

 gladdens the sight with its clean-cut outlines. These 

 I count as parts of my fernery, rather remotely placed 

 indeed, but all the better adapted by their situation 

 for the best growth of the varieties to which they are 

 set apart. 



There is one satisfactory trait about ferns, and that 

 is their constancy. They cling to their old haunts. 

 One finds them year after year in the same spot, true 

 to the patches of soil where their ancestors grew, 

 ready to welcome again and again the feet which 

 have learned the way thither. It is partly to this 

 " homing " instinct of the ferns that 1 owe my fernery, 

 with its variety of forms ample for study and enjoy- 

 ment compressed into so small a territory that a half- 



