112 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
it decorative possibilities. That was a time of rather 
rococo taste, of ‘‘tidies’”’ and ‘‘ what-nots” and redund- 
ant bric-a-brac: perhaps it is rather to its credit that 
it recognized the grace and beauty of this little plant. 
But it was not good for the plant. It became all the 
rage for house decoration. People who could went out 
in the fall and gathered their own supply of it: others 
bought theirs from peddlers who picked the fronds al- 
most by the wagon-load, and sold them on the streets 
of Hartford. They were bought fresh, then pressed or 
ironed, with the iron not too hot. So treated, and being 
naturally evergreen, they would stay green and fresh- 
looking all winter. No house was considered complete 
and up-to-date without at least a few sprays draped 
along the cords and over the frames of pictures and 
mirrors. Some, at least, of the fern must have been 
exported: Mrs. Parsons tells of seeing her parents’ 
house in New York decorated with fronds i 
from Hartford for the purpose. 
Perhaps in the literature of the time some one has 
written down the detailed history of this fashion. If 
so, I do not know it, and definite information about 
it—how long it lasted, how much damage it caused— 
is now hard to get. Certainly, however, large quan- 
tities of the fern must have been used, and the people 
living in the region where it grew ankeie disturbed and 
applied to the legislature for relief. That body re- 
sponded, and on July 8, 1867, the first bill for the pro- 
tection of a wild plant passed anywhere in the United 
States, forbidding anyone “wilfully to sever or take 
from the land of another any Lygodium or creeping fern 
growing or being thereon,” became a law. How far 
this action had its beginnings in the natural exas- 
peration of farmers whose pastures and wood-lots were 
invaded by fern peddlers, cannot now be determined; 
but it is interesting to note that the main argument of 
