FK11NS AND BOSSES. 37 
vegetable stores, the young shoots are often sold in bundles 
as a kind of salad. Those who prepare kid and chamois 
leather for sale employ ferns in dressing it; and of ten while 
the chamois hunter pursues his prey amid Alpine solitudes, 
his children range at the base of the stern rocks which he 
lias ascended, in quest of this valuable fern. 
And a truly wild plant is this same Brake, avoiding the 
haunts of man, and delighting in the purest air of heaven, 
among wastes and mountains, associated with legendary 
lore, and many a border tale of thrilling interest. 
" Beautiful fern ! 
Thy place is not where art exults to raise the tended flower, 
By terraced walk, or deck'd parterre, or fenced and shelter'd 
bower ; 
Xor where the straightly-levelled walks, of tangled boughs between, 
The sunbeam lights the velvet sward, and streams through alleys 
green. 
Thy dwelling is the desert heath, the wood, the haunted dell, 
And where the wild deer stoops to drink, beside the crystal well ; 
And by the lake with trembling stars bestud, when earth is still, 
And midnight's melancholy pomp is on the distant hill." 
TRUE MAIDENHAIR. 
The True Maidenhair (Adiantum aapillus- Veneris of 
nuthors) is the rarest and most beautiful of British ferns. 
He who adventures into moist caves, or on rocks near the 
sea-coast, may chance to find here and there a tuft of this 
elegant plant, firmly rooted in the crevices, yet uniformly 
