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where it is constantly liable to be buried by slips and 

 slides of the loose material. The way to plant it, 

 therefore, is to dig a hole with a northern aspect, half 

 fill it with loose rubbly fern mould, lay the plant on that 

 with the crown towards the north, and then bury it entirely 

 with a shovelful of gravel ; this done, drop a large burr 

 on the south side, leaving room on the north for the new 

 fronds to push through the gravel, as they will do. This 

 done, leave it alone and it will thrive for years. The Lady 

 Fern and the Hartstongue practically remain to complete 

 the list of available species, and both of these are too 

 familiar objects to require description or cultural suggestion. 

 So far we have dealt entirely with our British Ferns 

 from the normal point of view, i.e., as concerns those 

 types which grow wild in countless myriads in many parts 

 of the country, and find their way into our gardens, partly 

 by collection of the wild forms on the occasion of visits to 

 ferny districts, but far more largely owing to vandalistic 

 raids upon the wild plants for commercial purposes by the 

 tramp, the needy villager, and last, but by no means least, 

 by the wholesale raider with his horse and cart and lack 

 of any idea of meum and tuutn, who visits a picturesque 

 ferny lane and leaves desolation behind him. Given 

 suitable positions and a little care these common 

 forms are very pretty, but as we have seen it is only a few 

 of these that are utilized, so that a popular British 

 Fernery is ordinarily, as we have said, a monotonous 

 grouping of a few species only. What then will be thought 

 when we assert that a fully representative collection of 

 British Ferns would embrace many hundreds of distinct 

 forms, very many of which far and away eclipse the 

 common ones in delicacy and beauty ? Yet that this is so, 

 is evidenced by the magnificent collection in Kew Gardens, 

 where some thousands of British Ferns and some hundreds 

 of distinct varieties exemplify that remarkable faculty 

 which our Native Ferns possess of spontaneously sporting 



