SLATER : FLORA OF RIPON. 1 83 



hilly woods, rare. Healey, near Swinton ; Laver 

 district (Lees, 1. c). 



1638. Polypodium vulgare. Common polypody. Banks, 



walls, and old trees, frequent. 



1639. P. Phegopteris. Beech fern. Shady mountain woods, 



preferring dampish situations. Hackfall. 



1640. P. Dryopteris. Oak fern. Shady mountain woods. 



Hackfall. 

 1644. Osmunda regalis. Royal fern. Damp places. 

 Baines records it from near Knaresborough. No fern 

 has suffered more from tourists and robbers under the 

 name of botanists than this. The ordinary tourist has, 

 apparently, an idea that he can grow this fern in a 

 flower pot in his window, wherefore he never fails to 

 dig a plant or two up, and try. But ferns have worse 

 enemies even than the tourist, bereft as he is of a 

 conscience in the matter. I allude to that debased 

 product of civilisation, that vile sort of poacher, the 

 idle rascal who, too lazy to work honestly, learns the 

 names of a few ferns (probably in the first place from 

 a market gardener, who is, too often, of the same 

 blood), and gains a sort of living by purloining roots 

 of ferns by the hundred from every gentleman's woods 

 within his reach, and advertising them in the 'Bazaar,' 

 and similar publications, as " fine fern roots, nine- 

 pence a dozen." This trade ought to be as summarily 

 dealt with as that in pheasant's eggs, and every land 

 owner ought to preserve his ferns for posterity with 

 the same care as he does his pheasants for himself. 

 1 have been extremely pleased to note for the last two 

 years in the late Col. Crompton's woods a notice 

 posted up that " owing to the wanton destruction of 

 the flower and fern roots," trespassers would be 

 promptly prosecuted. O ! si sic omnes ! — would that 

 everv one else would do the same. The disease is bad 



