FEKNS AND MOSSES. 69 
JULY. 
" Green the land is where my daily 
Steps in jocund childhood play'd 
Dimpled close with hill and valley, 
Dappled every close with shade ; 
Summer-snow of apple blossoms, running up 
From glade to glade." 
ELIZABETH BARRETT. 
BACK to our own cottage home, mid glens and waterfalls, 
where grow most of the ferns and mosses which we found on 
Dartmoor ! Who that have travelled forth in quest of 
knowledge, Nature's pilgrims, visiting each shrine and 
dwelling-place of the rarest or loveliest of her offspring, 
do not remember the delight with which their hooks con- 
taining specimens were opened, and how vividly arose 
before their mental view the rock, or stream, or bank, the 
solitary glen or woodside, from whence they gathered the 
plant, the fern, or moss, which they had journeyed far to 
find? 
Such were our feelings as we carefully removed our ferns 
and mosses, looking on them with somewhat of pride, when 
noticing that not even the smallest pinnae had been injured 
in drying, nor yet a single root distorted from its place. 
Then came the pleasure of arranging them, of assigning the 
mosses to our moss-books, and the ferns to occupy the pages 
of a larger volume ; the writing of their names and where 
they grew, with such botanic memoranda concerning 
cromlechs and old rocking-stones, ancient bridges across 
racing torrents, and the trees of "YVistman's Wood, as 
brought up pleasant memories of our rambles on that wild 
moor, which has no parallel in British scenery. 
/ We gave you, botanical friends, drawings of the ferns, 
but one wet day did not suffice for delineating such mosses 
