102 The Fern Garden. 



adviser on their cultivation would dare to recommend 

 as good for them. Fully half of the whole number of 

 stove ferns known to cultivators have been well grown 

 in greenhouse temperature, and a very large proportion 

 of greenhouse ferns, properly so called, have been 

 grown to perfection, without any aid from artificial 

 heat, in our own garden. Our large specimens of 

 Adiantum cuneatum, Asplenium biformis, Blechnum 

 brasiliense, &c. &c, that we have exhibited in public, 

 have never known a taste of artificial heat from the 

 time when they started from spores under bell-glasses 

 until they attained their present dimensions of a yard 

 or so across. This adaptability is particularly exempli- 

 fied in the cultivation of ferns in closed cases, Mrs. 

 Hibberd's cases containing delicate ferns of the tropics 

 side by side with the natives of the British woods, yet 

 all in the most perfect health and beauty. 



The soil for pot ferns should always consist in great 

 part of vegetable mould and sand ; mellow loam, silky 

 to the touch and crumbling to powder between the 

 fingers without soiling them ; peat of a brownish rather 

 than a blackish cast, and containing an abundance of 

 vegetable fibre, so as rather to require tearing than 

 crumbling to reduce it ; sand of a sharp clean nature : 

 these three ingredients are sufficient for the prepara- 

 tion of a universal fern compost. In the case of very 

 small delicate habited ferns use two parts peat, re- 

 moving all the rougher portions, and one third sand. 

 For full growing and rather large plants use two parts 

 peat, one part loam, and one part sand, the rougher 

 fibrous portions to be laid over the crocks, and the 



