PERNS AND MOSSES. 
49 
that grew beside your father's cottage, or where you 
gathered nuts in. autumn, associated with thoughts of home 
and boyhood pleasures, bringing back to mind many a word 
of loving counsel to guide and cheer your onward progress. 
COMMON rOLYI-ODY. 
Lift up your head, young botanist, and think not that 
terns grow only on the ground ! A beauteous brotherhood 
of the Common Polypody Polypodium vulgare) is looking 
down upon you from the summit of a beetling crag ; and 
yonder old pollard is crowned with a tuft, among which the 
carlet-leaved crane's-bill and blue-bells are waving lightly 
in the breeze of summer, and a little linnet is pouring forth 
his melody. There are many happy creatures among that 
tuft of Polypodies. See you not the sulphur -coloured but- 
terfly, and her sister with gorgeously tinted wings a few 
industrious bees, singing at their work, and the emerald- 
coated beetle taking a nap among the lichens ? We will 
not, however, speak of these, but rather of ferns and the 
common Polypody one of the best known and most abun 
