52 ASPLENIUM BUTA-MURARIA. 
< Jtliers, says Gerarde, call it " Salvia vita (Preserver of 
Life), but wherefore I know not, neither themselves, if 
they were living." 
The best mode of raising this Fern, if desired for 
cultivation, is to collect the spores, or seeds, when ripe 
in August, and to sow them in a mixture of limey 
rubbish and leaf-mould, in a pot under a bell-glass, 
until the seedlings appear. Keeping it moist, and in a 
shaded part of the greenhouse. The glass must be 
removed when the seedlings are up. If attempted to be 
transplanted from a wall, it can very rarely be done 
successfully, unless the two bricks between which it is 
growing can be previously removed, so that the roots 
may be but slightly injured. The best time for thus 
moving it is just when it begins to grow in April. 
Plant it in a soil composed of three parts of rubbly 
limey-rubbish, one part sand, and one part leaf-mould. 
The pot must be well-drained, be kept constantly 
slightly moist, and in the shade. It requires a free ex. 
posure to air, which is the cause of its languishing under 
a Wardian Case. 
It is not improbable that the way in which the cone 
like main-root of this Fern tents or probes between the 
rocks or bricks where it grows, may have given rise to 
its old name of Tent-wort, which in that case is synony- 
mous with Probe-wort. Shakspere makes use of this 
now almost obsolete word in more than one passage. 
Thus, when Hamlet proposes to have " something like the 
murder of his father" performed before the king, he says : 
" I'll observe his looks 
I'll tent him to the quick ' 
