40 PERNS OP GREAT BRITAIN. 



only to the cultivation of waste lands, and to agricul- 

 tural improvements, that the extermination of some of 

 our rarer plants is owing ; it may be attributed also, in 

 some part at least, to the rapacity of botanists, who, 

 in some cases, too greedily pluck up, root and branch, 

 every specimen of a rare plant they can meet with," 

 It is owing to a rapacity of this kind that the lovely 

 Mowering Pern, once attaining such luxuriance and 

 beauty in the Isle of Madeira, has been entirely eradi- 

 cated. Visitors to that island, if they make a prolonged 

 stay, are almost sure to covet the possession of some of 

 the beautiful ferns so abundant there ; and as ferns are 

 preserved with little trouble, many collections from the 

 island are brought into this country, till at length this 

 fern has disappeared from the stations which it once 

 ornamented. It has now been planted there again, and 

 it is to be hoped wiU not be torn up so eagerly by 

 future collectors. 



The Marsh Fern, though a pretty plant, is one of the 

 least ornamental of a genus -producing several ferns of 

 peculiar grace. It has a slender stalk, arising from 

 a black underground stem, which creeps to a great 

 extent in the soft soil, and sends forth a large number 

 of tough fibrous roots. The frond is lanceolate in form^ 

 and pinnate; the pinnae are usually opposite, and cut 

 into lobes nearly to the mid-rib; the lobes are entire, 

 numerous, and rounded at the end, those of the fertile 

 frond having their margins curled backwards so as to 

 give them the appearance of being narrower and more 

 pointed. The colour of this fern is a pale green, and 

 its texture somewhat thin and delicate ; but the fertile 



