ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS. 
SWEET SHIELD-FERN. 
NATURAL ORDER, FILICES, 
ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS, Swartz.—Fronds four to twelve inches high, glandular and aromatic, nar- 
rowly lanceolate, with linear-oblong pinnately-parted pinnee; their crowded divisions 
oblong, obtuse, toothed or nearly entire, nearly covered beneath with the very large, thin, 
imbricated indusia, which are orbicular with a narrow sinus, the margin sparingly glandu- 
liferous and often ragged. (Gray’s AJanual of the Botany of the Northern Unitea States. 
See also Wood’s Class- Book of Botany, and Eaton's Ferns of North America.) 
; ) and the genera and species have a certain general 
resemblance to each other, so that few can be mistaken in their 
relationship. Thus those who know little of botany as a science 
can usually tell a fern when they see it, and can understand by 
this what a botanist means when he speaks of any particular 
family of vlants as being a very natural one. 
From this particular sameness in the general aspects of ferns, 
one might suppose that little could be said of each species in 
detail. In common language one might imagine that a “fern 
was merely a fern, and nothing more ;” but in truth beneath this 
general uniformity of dress lies a great variety of character, and 
the lessons we may derive from each species are almost as 
numerous as we might gather from the study of individual human 
beings. Weare often told of the lessons we may learn from 
flowers; but the lessons from plants which have no proper 
flowers, as ferns have not, are no less inviting. In some respects 
they have advantages which flowering plants have not, for often 
a flowering plant possesses but little interest to the average 
botanist when it is not in bloom, while the fern is generally inter- 
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