FBENS OE GREAT BRITAIN. 85 



incisum, has its pinnse cut into narrow notched segments 

 almost to the midrib. This fern is common, not only 

 throughout this kingdom, but throughout Europe. A 

 tea and syrup made of its fronds have long been used as 

 a remedy in pulmonary affections. It is by some writers 

 called A. melanocavlon. 



]0. ScoLOPENDKiuM (Hart's-tougue). 



1. S. vulgdre (Common Hart's-tongue). — Frond ob- 

 long, strap-shaped, simple ; base heart-shaped. To those 

 accustomed to wander about our green lanes and fields, 

 no fern wiU less require a minute description than this. 

 Its general features are known not alone to the botanist, 

 but to every observer of plants, and it varies under any 

 circumstances, too little from its ordinary form to make 

 it difficult of recognition. Its clumps of long, slender, 

 bright green leaves, with a surface so glossy that the rain- 

 drop runs off them, gather on sunny hedgebanks in 

 almost every rural district of our land, and are still 

 more often to be found on the moist and shady sides of 

 woods, among the long grasses, or coarse herbage, or the 

 tall stems of vdld flowers. The clumps are circular, 

 the fronds spreading out from the centre, and grace- 

 fully curving downwards. In May, when the hedges 

 are full of blue-beUs, and anemones, and rosy cranesbills, 

 the young fronds may be seen daily uncoiling some- 

 what further, till all traces of their scroll-like form are 

 lost, save a little curl at the tip of the frond, which in 

 a few days is levelled too, and the pale green colour of 

 the young frond gradually assumes its richer verdure. 

 In June and July the Hart's-tongue fern is very bright 



