94 
E uropean Ferns. 
arise from a short tufted caudex ; they are often very numerous, the remains of the old stipes 
forming a dense, almost globular, black mass, and looking very strange as they protrude from 
cracks in an old wall. Their singular appearance is enhanced by the fact that the pinnae, when 
old, easily become detached from the rachis, and drop to the ground, leaving the bare, black 
stems standing up erect. The rachis is rounded behind, but flat in front, and in this differs 
from the rachis of A. viride, which is flat on both sides. The fronds vary very considerably 
both in leno-th and breadth. Under very favourable circumstances they attain, or even exceed, 
a foot in length, while in less suitable situations they do not exceed two or three inches, and 
they are about half an inch broad. The average 
size, however, is fairly represented by the ac- 
companying figure — a facsimile of that given 
in Johnson’s “emaculate” edition of Gerard’s 
“ Herbal,” published in 1633. If will be seen 
from this, and one or two other old figures of 
ferns which we purpose to reproduce in the 
course of the present work, that the art of 
correctly portraying plants is by no means one 
of recent date. Indeed, it may be doubted 
whether the figures of the older herbalists are 
not in many instances more characteristic than 
those produced with all the assistance which 
the advance of modern art has been able to 
supply. The outline engravings with which 
Leonard Fuchs adorned his “History of Plants” 
in 1 542 have hardly been surpassed in fidelity 
to nature, except, perhaps, in the grand coloured 
folio plates which illustrate Curtis’s “ Flora Lon- 
dinensis ; ” and even in artistically less valuable 
works, such as the “ Herbals ” of Gerard and 
Parkinson, we often come across figures which 
at once arrest our attention, on account of the 
accuracy with which the habit, or what the 
French call the “ port ” of the plant delineated 
has been caught and transferred to paper. In 
this respect, indeed, many of our modern artists would do well to take a lesson ; they would be 
puzzled to give a more graphic representation of an entire plant in a small compass than was 
presented by these old authors in the days when engraving and printing were in their infancy. 
The fronds of the English Maidenhair are narrow, linear, and pinnate. The pinnae, which 
are very numerous and alternate, or opposite, are thick and dark-green, and vary a good deal 
in shape : in their normal form they are roundish egg-shaped, blunt at the apex, and somewhat 
tapering to the base, where they are attached to the rachis by extremely short stalks ; their 
margins are sometimes entire, but usually more or less waved. The pinnae are either distant 
or crowded in different plants ; we have already alluded to their deciduous character, and 
the readiness with which they drop away from the rachis. Their venation consists of a central 
vein, from which forked veinlets are given off ; the upper one of these veinlets or venules bears 
the narrow, oblong sori, which at first are covered by a long, whitish indusium, which disappears 
ft a 
ASPLENIUM TRICHOMANES, FROM JOHNSON’S EDITION 
of gerard’s “herbal.” 
