dti COJIJIOX BKAKES. 



Tliis is the most abundant of our British ferns ; there being 

 scarcelj' a heath, common, wood, or forest, in any part of the 

 United Kingdom, in which it does not make its appearance. 

 Its presence in great abundance is said to indicate poverty in 

 the soil; but from its luxuriance when growing in the vege- 

 table mould of woods, and in highly manured gardens, I am 

 inclined to suppose that its usual absence from rich cultivated 

 land, is rather to be attributed to the effects of the plough and 

 the hoe than to any quality of the soil. It is quickly eradicated 

 by either of these instruments, and seems peculiarly susceptible 

 of injury. It appears one of those truly wild plants which fly 

 from man, and take refuge in wastes and wildernesses. In size 

 it is extremely variable ; being sometimes scarcely a foot in 

 height, while at others it reaches an altitude of ten and even 

 twelve feet. Although it occurs on every other description of 

 soil, it avoids chalk, and scarcely a plant can be detected on 

 the South Downs of Sussex. In dry gravel it is usually pre- 

 sent, but of small size ; while in thick shady woods, having a 

 moist and rich soil, it attains an enormous size, and may often 

 be seen climbing up, as it were, among the lower branches and 

 imderwood, resting its delicate pinnules on the little twigs, and 

 hanging gracefully over them : under these circumstances it is 

 a fern of exquisite beauty. 



gMtriptton. 



The radicles are brown, fibrous, and tomentose : the caudex 

 is a nearly cylindrical, brown, velvety rhizome, about the size 

 of a goose-quill ; it is always subterranean, extending itself ra- 

 pidly in a horizontal direction, it sometimes however descends 

 deeply and almost perpendicularly, When the London and 

 Croydon Eailway was in progress, I found, in the New-Cross 

 cutting, great abundance of these rhizomes in a decayed state, 

 some of them extending to a perpendicular depth of fifteen feet. 

 Whenever the fern has stood unmolested for a long series of 

 years, the soil becomes filled with matted masses of these rhi- 

 zomes, every portion of which sends up fronds in the spring, 

 so that acres of land are sometimes covered with a growth of 

 bracken, a circumstance which has induced Dr. Johnston, in his 



