lOG A FERN BOOK FOR EYERTBODY. 



place can be secured for growing the Pilmy Ferns, tlie 

 glass which covers them should always be shaded by 

 throwing a piece of muslin over it. It is an advantage 

 to have a hole drilled through the top of the hand-glass, 

 and stopped with a peg of soft wood, which can easily be 

 removed for ventilation. "When not grown upon slate or 

 sandstone, the following mixture is recommended: Fibrous 

 peat, a little silver sand, and some bog moss or Sphagnum 

 made quite dry, and rubbed into powder. This to be mixed 

 with pieces of charcoal, and placed on the top of drainage 

 material, which should occupy the lower half of the pot. 

 The plants to be secured on this mixture and covered 

 with a bell-glass. The pot to be kept in a glazed pan, 

 and stood in a very shady place. 



WILSON'S FILMY FEEN.^ 



The One-sided Filmy Fern, or, as sometimes called, 

 Wilson's Filmy Fern, has a small creeping wiry root- 

 stock, and from the interwoven mass of these, the fronds 

 arise in a large green patch, sometimes 3 or 4 feet, or 

 more, in extent. The average height is not more than 

 from 2 to 4 inches. The upper portion of the tough, 

 dark-coloured leaf-stalk has a membranaceous expansion 

 or narrow wing on either side. The outline of the frond 

 is narrowly spear-shaped. The leaflets are arranged in a 

 feathery manner on each side, but as they are all turned 

 towards one side, this has been designated the One-sided 

 Filmy Fern. The outline of the leaflets approaches a wedge 

 shape, deeply cut down from the apex into long narrow 

 lobes, like the outspread fingers of a tiny hand. The 

 texture of the leaflets is filmy and delicate, of a dull 

 olivaceous green, the tops of the fronds generally curved 

 over to one side. The clusters of spore-cases are con- 

 tained in urn-shaped capsules on the edge of the leaflets, 

 each of such capsules having a central projecting stalk or 

 little column standing up in its centre, around which the 



• Hymenophyllum unilaterale, Willd., or ffymenophyllum Wilsoni, Hook. 



