A BUNCH OP PBENS. 



" Barren tracts are colonized by ferns long before many other 

 tribes could vegetate thereon, and on sterile soils where other plants 

 would perish for want of food the hardy ferns And sustenance 

 enough." — ^Bubnett's " Botany." 



There are few, perhaps, in the present day, who 

 do not know what is meant by a fern, or who do 

 not know an ordinary fern by sight, and, possibly, 

 the town resident is even more familiar with these 

 elegant but withal flowerless members of the floral 

 world, than he is with many more common wayside 

 weeds. Ferns and fem-oases in houses, fern-covered 

 rock, and ferns in Crystal Palace and winter gardens, 

 have become fashionable and favourite objects of 

 interest ; and well they may, for there are few more 

 elegant forms in nature than those presented to us 

 by '' fern fronds " as the leaves are called. True, 

 many of the most elegant — no other adjective so 

 well expresses fern beauty — are not of the number of 

 our British Wayside Weeds, but still we have many 

 a fern which may rank as such among forty or fifty 

 British species, and some of the commonest, such as 

 the male and the lady-fern, and even common brake. 



