158 LA8TR.EA FIL1X-MAS. 
The above is not the only use to which this Fern is 
applied, for the Siberians are fond of the flavour which 
it imparts to ale, and its ashes contain so much potash 
as to be especially valuable to the soap and glass- 
maker. In Norway the young fronds, before they uncurl, 
are boiled and eaten like Asparagus, and in hard 
winters the dried fronds are there soaked in hot water 
and given as fodder to cattle. 
The superstitions of old connected with this Fern 
very widely prevailed, and have been rendered classical 
by Shakspeare and other writers. " This Ferae," says 
Lyte in his Herbal, published in 1578, "beareth neither 
flowers nor seede, except we shal take for seede the 
blacke spottes growing on the backside of the leaves, 
the whiche some do gather, thinking to work wonders, 
but to say the trueth, it is nothing els but trumperie 
and superstition." Bauhin, writing in 1650, in his His- 
toria Plantarum, says, " These black spots fall about the 
festival of St. John (June 25), and are collected by 
certain women and sold as Fern-seed. I will not relate 
the follies and superstitions practised with this seed." 
" ' Fern-seed,' says Grose, ' is looked on as having great 
magical powers, and must be gathered on Midsummer Eve. 
A person who went to gather it reported that the spirits 
whisked by his ears, and sometimes struck his hat and other 
parts of his body; and, at length, when he thought he had 
got a good quantity of it, and secured it in papers and a box, 
when he came home he found both empty.' [Bovet, in his 
Pandsemonium, 1684, gives a narrative of some ladies who 
say, ' We had been told divers times that if we lasted on 
Midsummer Eve, and then at 12 o'clock at night laid a cloth 
