THE FERN BULLETIN 



99 



But even in that day there were those who preferred to 

 dope themselves with patent medicines instead of being 

 doped in the orthodox way by methods that were not 

 patent nor patented, and Louis XIV appears to have 

 been among the number, for it is recorded that a cer- 

 tain Madam Xorisser or Nuffler of Switzerland took 

 advantage of his ignorance and also took the oppor- 

 tunity to relieve him of eighteen thousand francs, real 

 money, in exchange for the information that the root 

 of this plant is a vermifuge, and a very excellent tape- 

 vermifuge at that. Whether this eighteen thousand 

 francs story is a mere bit of pleasant fiction or the real 

 facts, it is hard to decide. It is told also with reference 

 to Louis XV and Louis XVI. The only thing that re- 

 mains certain, is that the ferns reputation is founded on 

 facts. 



Though the ancients fully recognized the virtues of 

 the male fern, they never quite comprehended its pecu- 

 liar methods of multiplication. Long and earnestly 

 they watched it for evidences of flowers and fruits and 

 the more they watched the more mysterious, marvellous 

 and miraculous the matter seemed. It was but a step, 

 or rather a jump, to the conclusion that the seeds were 

 invisible. This was quite correct — the seeds are in- 

 visible and always have been — but when the embryo 

 pteridologers made the further inference that though 

 invisible the seeds existed and only needed to be secured 

 to make their possessor not only out of sight but bring 

 him untold wealth as well, they opened the way for the 

 practice of much chicanery by means of which the 

 credulous hoped to achieve the Yankee apotheosis of 

 success — the obtaining of something for nothing. 

 That this something for nothing could only be obtained 

 by watching the fern on one particular night in the year 

 at an hour when all honest folks ought to be in bed and 



