CTENOPTERIS VULGARIS. 



43 



In Great Bri- 

 tain, it is one of 

 our most familiar 

 and most abun- 

 dant ferns. Just 

 as tlie common 

 brakes seems to shun man and 

 to seek the forests and tlie wilds 

 and heaths, where his imple- 

 ments of husbandry offer it no distixrbance ; so does the poly- 

 pody appear to affect the companionship of man, to shun the 

 waste, and to claim the shelter of the hedge-row : it forsakes 

 the common, and establishes itself on the church tower or the 

 church-yard wall : it especially delights in the stone roofs of 

 our cottages : it leaves the forest tree to rejoice in its vigour, 

 but surrounds with a verdant crown the pollard willows that 

 fringe the margins of our mill-streams or overshadow our horse- 

 ponds. It is emphatically a parasite, a parasite moreover on 

 the weali ; and when it occasionally makes its appearance far 

 away from man and the works of man's hands, it is sure to be 

 found clinging to some giant of the forest that is hastening to 

 ruin. Such an one it will often crown with joyous green, — 

 invest with 



" A gilded halo hovering round decay." 



