226 
THE FLOEAL WOBLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
leverage of all small hand-tools. When ferns of large size are 
taken up in the height of summer, it is best to cut away all or nearly 
all their fronds at once, and use those fronds as p aching material. 
On reaching home, the best treatment to subject them to is to 
pot them all separately in the smallest pots their roots can he got 
into, with cocoa-nut fibre alone, or the fibre of good peat or leaf- 
mould, and shut them up in a frame, and keep only moderately 
moist until they start into growth. As at this early stage of the 
study we may suppose you do not knowhow to pot them and restore 
their energies, we will endeavour to point out a simpler mode of 
procedure. Find a very shady place in the garden, and there make 
a bed of leaf-mould or peat-soil, or cocoa-nut fibre refuse, and plant 
the ferns iu it, as close together as possible. Then cover them with 
hell-glasses or common hand-lights, and sprinkle them with water 
every evening, but take care not to make them very wet at the roots. 
They will soon begin to grow. In the spring following you may 
plant them in the fernery. 
Small ferns found growing on rocks and walls must always be 
carefully dealt with. The little maidenhair spleenwort will some- 
times send its black wiry roots quite through the substance of a 
nine-inch or fourteen-inch wall, and to remove it with complete roots 
is then quite out of the question. By loosening a portion of its 
hold just below the crown of the plant, roots may generally be 
obtained sufficient to enable it to re-establish itself under culti- 
vation. A strong chisel and a hammer will be required in under- 
takings of this sort, and it may be well to add a little discretion also, 
especially as to the extent to which walls — the property of some- 
body — are to be injured for the sake of a tuft of fern worth but a few 
pence, and of which specimens may be obtained more easily by further 
search, without any necessity for the infliction of damage. Ferns 
found growing on and amongst rocks should always, if possible, be 
obtained with portions of the rock to which they are attached. If 
this cannot be accomplished, carefully tear the plant from the rock 
in a way to injure the roots as little as possible. Good pieces will 
soon emit roots and fronds if properly treated, especially if kept 
moist by packing in moss or sphagnum from the first moment of 
obtaining the specimen. Allow me to remark, further, that the 
passion for fern collecting has in many instances been carried 
to a ridiculous excess by persons who merit the title not of fern 
collectors so much as fern destroyers. Let every genuine lover of 
ferns be on his guard both to discourage reckless fern collecting, 
and to protect, as far as possible, the few remaining localities of 
scarce British ferns. It is not many years since we saw amongst a 
heap of dried mosses, ferns, grasses, etc., in the possession of a lady, 
a sheet of Tunbridge fern nearly a yard square. This had been torn 
from its native site, carefully rolled up like a piece of old blanket, 
and put away, and was afterwards brought forth as a trophy, and 
preserved as a memorial of the days “ when we went gipsying.” 
The value of that sheet, when fresh, might have been about £5, and 
no doubt any nurseryman could make a larger sum of a good square 
yard of the Tunbridge fern. Such reckless destruction, such base 
