INTRODUCTION. 
XXV11 
are more really effectual than we shall easily believe. The locksman at Teddington told me 
that he had broken the bone of his little finger, and for two months it was grinding and grunding, 
so that he felt sometimes quite wrong in himself. One day he saw Dr. go by, and told 
him. He said, ‘You see that there Comfrey ; take a piece of the root, and clean it, and put it to 
your finger, and wrap it up.’ The man did so, and in four days his finger was well. This 
story struck me the more since the Comfrey is the confirma of the Middle Ages and the gv^vtov 
of the Greeks, both which names seem to attribute to the plant the same consolidating virtue.” 
But it is time to return to our ferns, from which we seem somehow to have strayed. 
A few other properties of our ferns will be considered when each species is described at 
length ; but it must be admitted that when all is said that can be brought together regarding 
them, the useful qualities of the group are by no means conspicuous, and the same may be 
said of the extra-European species. 
Even when useful properties exist, they are 
by no means striking. Speaking generally, we 
may say that the fronds of ferns, when they 
possess any distinct properties, are mucilaginous 
and slightly astringent, while the rhizomes are 
in many cases bitter, astringent, and rather acrid ; 
both the rhizomes and stems of many species 
abound in starch. If active beneficial properties 
are absent in any marked degree, it is pleasant 
to find that there is an equal absence of noxious 
qualities ; so far as is known, we have no example 
of a poisonous fern. 
Besides the European species, we may enume- 
rate a few which are employed in some way either 
in medicine or commerce. Beginning with such 
as are used as food, the soft mucilaginous pith 
of Cyathea mcdullaris, one of the large tree-ferns 
of New Zealand, was formerly eaten by the 
natives ; it is of a reddish colour, and when 
baked acquires a pungent taste, somewhat re- 
sembling that of the radish. In New Caledonia another species of Cyathea (C. Vieil/ardi ) 
is similarly employed, the mucilaginous matter being obtained by means of incisions made 
in the stem or at the base of the fronds. In New Zealand, indeed, ferns seem to be in 
some repute for their edible properties ; the large, swollen, scaly rhizomes of Marattia 
fraxinea — a widely-distributed Old World fern of coarse habit, having large twice or three times 
pinnate fronds with fleshy stipes — are also eaten by the Maoris. The rhizomes of another New 
Zealand fern, Pteris esculenta — a fern nearly allied to, or perhaps only a form of, our common 
Bracken ( P . aquilina), which, as we shall see, has itself been employed as food in more ways 
than one — serve as food to the natives, who roast them in ashes, peel them with their teeth, 
and eat them with meat as we do bread. This custom, however, like so many others of 
aboriginal growth, has become to a great extent obsolete. Forster speaks of the New 
Zealanders as pounding the previously roasted fern-roots between stones, in order to extract 
the nutritious matter, the woody portion being rejected as useless. In Nepaul the rhizomes 
of Nephi'olepis tuberosa arc similarly employed. 
CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES. 
1. Ceratopteris thalictroides (£ nat. size). 
2. Under surface of barren pinna (f nat. size). 
3. Section of part of fertile pinna (4 times nat. size). 
4. Section of part of do. laid open (4 times nat. size). 
