IRRESISTIBLE CHARM OF FERNS 111 
desperate men led by the great villain, Carver Doone, 
armed to the teeth and on murder bent, passed by in 
the woods of Plovers Barrows. Fortunately he heard 
them coming through the bushes before they saw him. 
“T had no time to fly,’”’ he said, “but with a sort of 
instinct threw myself flat in amongst the thick fern and 
held my breath and lay still as a log.” Thanks to the 
“thick fern” John escaped discovery, and later on: led 
an armed expedition into Doone Valley which destroyed 
this band of cut throats and robbers who had terrorized 
the neighborhood for so many years. 
Although it is true that not nearly as many references 
to the ferns are to be found in the books of our writers 
as in those of England and Scotland, nevertheless 
that there is, here in America, a most wide-spread and 
enthusiastic interest in these beautiful plants can be 
easily shown. 
“Tf you wish to know the ferns,’’ wrote Mrs. Frances 
Theodora Parsons, in her easy and graceful style, 
“you must follow them to nature’s most sacred re- 
treats. In remote, tangled swamps, overhanging the 
swift noiseless brook, in the heart of the forest, close 
to the rush of the foaming waterfall, in the depths of 
some dark ravine, or perhaps high upon mountain 
ledges, where the air is purer, and the world wider, 
and life more beautiful than we had fancied, these 
wild graceful things are most at home.” 
In his book on “Ferns” beautifully illustrated by 
photographic reproductions that clearly show the ar- 
tistic temperament of the author, Campell E. Waters 
thus describes the Bulblet Bladder fern. “Sometimes 
in-shaded ravines we come across patches of this fern 
with its fronds hanging down over the moist rocks as 
if trying to hide their bareness. The delicate leaf- 
like curtain formed of the slender interwining fronds is 
one of the most beautiful sights of the woods. There 
