232 HOME AND GARDEN 



highest pictorial value. Growing only a foot high 

 on the poorest and most exposed of our sandy wastes, 

 in sheltered woodland its average is six to seven feet, 

 while in hedges and clumps of forest brake it rushes 

 up among the taller growths, and shows the upper 

 ends of its fronds at a height almost incredible. How 

 delightful it is by the sides of our many unfenced 

 roads ; how it accommodates itself to the conditions 

 of its position and graces every place. How perfectly 

 it groups itself with its wild companions great and 

 small ; with the Heaths and fine Grasses of the moor- 

 lands, with the Brambles and Thorns, Hollies, Birches, 

 Junipers, and small Oaks of the wild poor ground that 

 has never known the plough, with the thicker woods 

 of Fir, where in cooler ground it takes a deeper colour ; 

 while in woodland openings the blue of the heavens 

 is reflected in the wide-spread sheets of flattened 

 frond. 



Then one thinks with satisfaction of how pleasant 

 a shelter it is to living creatures, to the deer of park 

 and forest, and to all the smaller feathered and furry 

 folk of copse and moorland and roadside waste. 



It is not in summer only that the Bracken is good 

 to see, for in winter its cheerfulness of rusty warmth 

 is distinctly comforting, as we who live on the sandy 

 hills well know. For when we visit our neighbours 

 in the weald or in the valleys, and see the sodden 

 grass reeking with winter wet, and the leafless trees 

 dripping, and the cold mists hanging to the ground 



