
FERNS. 527 
_ of a double-headed eagle, as some imagine, whence its name, 
: from aquila, or Eagle Fern, an Austrian conceit, perhaps. Its 
_ ashes are used by soap boilers and glass manufacturers. A 
_ fine native variety of this is the caudata of the Southern United 
= States, with the segments, and especially the terminal ones, 
- elongated; and two others beside are Southern. Thus there 
F are three North American “brackens,” and a variety in all 
_ three, to set against the British one. And as to our beautiful 
Maidenhair (Adiantum pedatum), which grows in the rocky 
ravines of Danvers, Salem, and its vicinity, we are. told that 
it is “more hardy than the British, succeeding either in the 
Open air or in a greenhouse,” but I can aver that the A. 
Capillus- Veneris of England is a lovely fern, and a choice 
_ companion for its American sister. 
’ The Bladder Ferns ( Cystopteris) appear in three species 
m the British flora, and in two in ours; elegant ferns and 
easy of cultivation; one, the fragile Bladder Fern, creeping 
out of limestone and granite crevices alike, and from the in- 
terstices of old walls ; and a bulb-bearing one furnished with 
‘Me most cunning little green balls on the pinne. I have 
3 them both in cultivation, the former British too, but the 
Royal and the Mountain Bladder Ferns are not represented 
here; the latter is exceedingly pretty. The Woodsias are 
two, one identical with our own, the W. Zvensis, a hairy 
: little fern, which grows in woolly tufts, so patient of summer 
_“toughts on our sunburnt rocks. And against the Alpine 
l Woodsia we must set three that are North American. The 
British Filmy Fern ( Hymenophyllum); was there ever any- 
mug more delicate “on rocks which are continually moist 
“Subject to the spray of water-falls, and not uncommon 
M rocky mountainous» districts?” but it is principally rep- 
sented in tropical regions in many species; in England 
n two, while another British Fern closely related to Zricho- 
me radicans, “on dripping rocks beneath the spray of 
EN ills, and confined to Ireland,” is found in Alabama 
a Tennessee, with another and tiny species, its minute and 











