238 THROUGH GLADE AND MEAD. 
up any gaps in the foliage along the margin of the 
woodland. This plant has many showy flowers but they 
seldom ripen any fruit, and some rudimentary and in- 
conspicuous flowers, which are generally fruitful. In 
this respect it resembles the violets. 
The ferns, too, are now very abundant; none of 
them is more attractive to me than the graceful Asplen- 
zum ebeneum. J must often examine under the com- 
pound microscope these brown spots upon the back of 
the frond and try to realize, if only imperfectly, the 
marvelous contrivances and inexhaustible variety shown 
in the vegetable world. Who knows but that there are 
other worlds of vegetable forms as far beyond the power 
of the microscope to discover as that which it discovers 
to us is beyond the power of our unaided vision? Here, 
in the Onoclea, we find at first only sterile fronds with 
no sign of fruitage on the back in the shape of either 
rounded or oblong spots, or coiled up under the margin 
as in the maiden-hair. But if we push these sterile 
fronds aside we shall find here and there among them 
the shorter stems, surmounted by greenish clusters re- 
sembling small berries, which are the fertile fronds and 
do not suggest ferns. 
The order Lycopodiacee, like the ferns, stands near 
the head of the flowerless plants. Like them, too, it has 
a remote ancestry. In the forests of the Carboniferous 
Age gigantic members of this family flourished, whose 
