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growing trees provide the needful shade and shelter, and 

 even permit of such ideal fern habitats as winding wood- 

 land walks and umbrageous dells, where all that is left 

 to desire is the Devonian rainfall in lieu of that of 

 Middlesex, where drought is too often a serious handicap. 



Apart from the ferns themselves, much ingenuity is 

 shewn in their specific arrangement. There are, for 

 instance, a series of bays in a row under the shelter 

 of lofty trees bordering the woodland in question. These 

 bays consist of a short, broad path, surrounded horse- 

 shoe fashion with wide, sloping beds, furnished here and 

 there with stepping stones to facilitate access to the ferns 

 installed in them. These bays are each about 21 feet 

 wide by 27 feet deep, and over them, by means of wires, 

 there are spread thin adjustable sheets of scrim, or thin 

 canvas, while each bay is enclosed by a privet hedge. 

 To each bay is allotted but one species, whose varieties 

 are arranged according to size and type, so that here we 

 may see some dozens of dwarf ones, and there a group of 

 extra robust ones. All through, however, the different 

 types or varietal sections are set out in separate groups, 

 each specimen being given sufficient space to show its 

 full character. The greater number of these bays is 

 devoted to the Shield Ferns, or Polystichums, mainly 

 P. angular c, of which alone in this collection there are 

 several hundred distinct varieties. Another bay is 

 devoted to Lady Ferns, Athyrium filix fcemiua, in the 

 same systematic way, and in another we see nothing 

 but the Harts tongue, Scolopendrium vulgar e, in a hundred 

 and more distinct and different forms, from minute 

 bunches of moss-like frondage to yard-long fronds, 

 reminding one by their size of those in Cornish woods, 

 but of very different forms, in the shape of broad frills 

 and fringes, or heavy tassels on endlessly varied lines. 



Leaving these bays and turning into the wood, we pass 



