74 The Fern Garden. 



choose from for the materials for a fern garden. If 

 the reader has no innate horror of statistics, a few 

 figures may be interesting. It must be understood 

 that amongst the varieties are many extremely curious 

 plants. Some are richly tasselled and fringed, some have 

 duplicated fronds, and the variations otherwise com- 

 prise imitations (or resemblances to) stag's horns, frills, 

 fans, wires, bristles, embroidery, braiding, puckering, 

 and embossing. Some of the varieties are notched as 

 if a child had cut faces out of them, others are shrunk 

 up to mere stalks ; some have spores on the wrong side, 

 that is to say, on upper side of the fronds, others never 

 produce spores at all, and a few produce their offspring 

 ready made in the form of little plants at the points of 

 their fronds or on every part of their leafy surface. 

 Some varieties are so curious, so rare, and so difficult to 

 multiply that they range in price from one to five guineas 

 a plant. This need not terrify the humble fern collec- 

 tor, for many of the handsomest may be bought for a 

 shilling each. The catalogue prices of 319 kinds enu- 

 merated in Sim's catalogue amount to £130 16s. — say 

 if those not priced be added, j£200 for one plant each of 

 the 365. The varieties of hartstongue alone are about 100 

 in number, and to buy one each would cost in the aggre- 

 gate .£50. Here ends the statistical statement. Now let 

 us hastily run through the list of British ferns, saying 

 nothing about synonyms or knotty points in classifi- 

 cation, for with these matters we cannot now have 

 anything to do. For our purpose au alphabetical 

 arrangement will be best. 

 Adiantum. — A. capillus veneris, the true majden- 



