12 FERNS OP GREAT BRITAIN. 



feet high, remarks, " One might almost fancy that the 

 tall and dense forests around it. had drawn np the well- 

 known shrub, or rather weed, of our English deer-parks, 

 into a higher order of the vegetable family. When 

 I left England some of my friends were fern-mad, and 

 were nursing little microscopic Viarieties with vast anxiety 

 and expense. Would that I could place them for a 

 minute beneath the patulous umbrella of this magnificent 

 species of Cryptogamia ! " On the forks of some of the 

 old timber trees in this region, grew also the Stag's- 

 horn Fern {Acrosticum alcicorne), as large as the largest 

 cabbage, the frond exactly resembhng the palmated 

 antlers of the moose and reindeer. This luxurious 

 growth extends to a variety of other herbaceous and 

 shrubby species, which hang upon the stems and branches, 

 of trees, or rise as an undergrowth to the towering ferns 

 from whose tops spring large fronds, often eight or ten 

 feet long, thrice-pinnated, and so graceful and light that 

 the smallest breeze sets them in tremulous motion. The 

 works of Baron Humboldt abound in descriptions of the 

 ferns in the forests of South America ; and every writer 

 on New Zealand tells of the ferns of that island. Hum- 

 boldt remarks that the arborescent ferns produce the 

 densest of shade in the American forests, by reason of 

 their number and luxuriant growth. He describes some 

 of the old trunks of these ferns as having a metallic 

 lustre, owing to a carbonaceous powder with which they 

 are covered, and he adds that no other plant exhibits 

 this phenomenon. This traveller brought away some of 

 the powder from the old trunks of the Aspidium and 

 Meniscium. In the time of Linnaeus four species only of 



