PERNS OP GREAT BRITAIN. 11 



thickened extremity, and, being densely clothed with 

 brown hair, instantly remind us of the leg and foot of 

 the animal to which its name alludes. The true roots of 

 ferns are the fibres which descend from the rootstock. 

 Our native species of Fern are between forty and fifty 

 in number ; the Horse-tails and Club-mosses being fern- 

 like plants, and not true ferns, though they are com- 

 monly called jointed or leafless ferns. None of our ferns 

 in their ordinary state attain more than six feet in height, 

 and we rarely find any, except the Common Brake or 

 the Flowering Fern, nearly so high. When growing in 

 large numbers, they are sometimes conspicuous on the 

 landscape; but nowhere in Britain do they give, as in 

 tropical climates, its characteristic feature to the scenery, 

 or assume the dimensions of trees. Herbaceous ferns 

 belong chiefly to temperate and colder countries ; but, 

 in the warmer regions, shrubby ferns cover the ground, 

 forming, like our Common Brake, an under-growth 

 in woods ; while the herbaceous species are found chiefly 

 growing upon trees, where, clinging sometimes to the 

 topmost boughs, or investing the rugged trunks with 

 their green sprays, they display a luxuriance and beauty 

 unknown to the British fern. Tree ferns, too, of exqui- 

 site grace and beauty, grow in the tropical forest. 

 Whether, however, of humble growth, or rising to the 

 height of twenty or thirty feet ; whether herbaceous or 

 arborescent in habit, they have all so much similarity of 

 general appearance, that they are readily known to be 

 ferns, even by those who have never studied the botanic 

 description of plants. Colonel Mundy, when referring 

 to some of the tree-ferns of Australia, more than twenty 



