278 
NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE 
Fern and 
bracken, 
Scotch 
heather, 
flourish, and occasionally, in the spring of the 
year, one meets with slender-stemmed wild- 
flowers, looking pale and delicate in their shad- 
owed homes. The hardy ferns will grow near 
the bush, but the ground they usually cover is 
under the forest-trees and in the oak openings. 
Everywhere, even in the Adirondack forests, 
their growth is rank. Sometimes they will 
reach up as high as one’s head, but they are 
usually of knee-high growth and of a yellow- 
green hue. They do not usually grow well in 
the sunlight. Even the bracken of the Scotch 
hills and valleys clusters under the evergreen 
and the mountain-ash, or hides its roots beneath 
tall grass. It is a more rusty-looking covering 
than the American varieties of fern, but is nev- 
ertheless picturesque. 
The most conspicuous covering of Scotland, 
however, is the heather. It is a coarse, shaggy 
under-shrub, growing close to the soil and cov- 
ering the treeless hills and moors in great fields 
many miles in extent. It belongs with the 
dark soil of the peat-peds, the crags of the 
mountain-peaks, and the low-flying clouds of 
Scotland, and is seen to advantage in the late 
summer when it is in bloom. The whole as- 
pect of the country is then changed by it. One 
