THE UNCOILING FRONDS. 



HE first call of Spring awakens the 

 ferns. Before the last snow-banks 

 have vanished from the shady hol- 

 lows and while meadows are still 

 bare and the woods deserted, the impa- 

 tient young crosiers begin to stir the 

 dead leaves in sheltered nooks. By the 

 middle of April, in this latitude, millions 

 are putting forth. Some, like tiny green 

 serpents, uncoil in the shelter of rock or 

 fallen log ; others hang from the shelves of mossy prec- 

 ipices ; while still others boldly appear along woodland 

 streams, in fence corners and in open thickets, and soon 

 the whole under-wood is filled with their waving pennons. 

 When Thoreau wrote that " Nature made ferns for 

 pure leaves, to show what she could do in that line " he 

 voiced a thought which must often come to those who 

 contemplate this beautiful race of plants. Whether it 

 be a denizen of our own fields and woodlands or the 

 lordly tree-ferns of the Tropics, we are obliged to confess 

 that in these we have, indeed, " the proudest of all plants 

 in the structure of their foliage." All the grace and 

 beauty that may exist in mere leaves is here perfected 

 and the title of "Nature's lacework" is well merited. 

 Nature, however, is too clever to make all ferns beau- 



