42 The Fern Garden. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE FERNERY AT THE FIRESIDE. 



HOUSANDS of amateur fern growers have 

 only a glass case in the sitting-room for a fern 

 garden. In the heart of a great city where 

 gardens are unknown, and even the graveyards are 

 desecrated by accumulations of filth, the fern case is 

 a boon of priceless value. It is a bit of the woodside 

 sealed down with -the life of the wood in it, and when 

 unsealed for a moment it gives forth an odour that 

 might delude us into the belief that we had been sud- 

 denly wafted to some bosky dell where the " nodding 

 violet grows." Before we go a step further it is but 

 just to the memory of a good man to call to mind that 

 for many years the structures now <:ommonly called 

 " fern cases" were known as " Wardian cases," being 

 the invention of 4he late Mr. B. N. Ward, an eminent 

 surgeon, many years resident in Finsbury Circus, who 

 died at a ripe age in 1868. Peace to his memory ' He 

 not only added to the embellishments of the English 

 home and the recreations of English domestic life, but 

 his invention has been of incalculable service in the 

 introduction of valuable exotic plants to this country, 

 for if shut up close in Wardian cases they travel over 



