WILD FERNS 225 



I have still a strong plant, that, after several 

 removals, has, I hope, found a final resting-place. 

 How tough that black root-mass Avas ! no spade, 

 much less trowel, would divide it ; after a first 

 trial with these feebler implements we had to give 

 it up and come back another day armed with 

 choppers. It was no matter of regret, for the 

 place was full of beauty. Such a wild bog-garden ! 

 Sheets of brilliant Sphagnum covering stretches of 

 soft black bog that could not be crossed, but whose 

 edges might be cautiously approached. Quantities 

 of the wonderful little Sundew clutching its prey; 

 white plumes of the silky Cotton-grass ; tufts of 

 Bog- Asphodel, neatest of small plants, with its sheaf 

 of tiny Iris-like leaves and conspicuous spikes of 

 deep-yellow flower ; the pale and shaggy Marsh St. 

 John's Wort, and, daintiest and loveliest of wild 

 plants, the tiny Bog Pimpernel, its thread-like stem 

 carrying the neat pairs of leaves through the tufts 

 of Sphagnum, and its flowers of tenderest, loveliest 

 pink looking up to the sun. 



Then what stretches of the pink Bell Heather, 

 with here and there a white one for luck, and the 

 pink all kinds of pink from pale to quite a rosy 

 colour. And what a joy it was to find for the 

 first time, on a rather bare patch that two years 

 ago some poor commoner had pared for peat, the 

 Stag's Horn Moss {Lycopodium clavaticm), with its 

 bright though deep green prostrate branches pinned 



p 



