258 PTEEIS AQUILINA. 
improver of land ; for its ashes, if burnt, will yield double 
the quantity of salt that most other vegetables will. 
" Fern is also an excellent manure for Potatoes ; for, if 
buried beneath their roots, it never fails to produce a good 
crop. 
"Its use as a good litter in the stable and the fold is 
'mown to every farmer ; as, also, that it makes a brisk fire, 
when dried, for the purposes of brewing and baking. 
"Its astringency is so great that it is used in many 
places abroad in dressing and preparing kid and chamois 
leather. 
" In several places in the North the inhabitants mow it 
green, and, burning it to ashes, make those ashes up into 
balls with a little water, which they dry in the sun, and 
make use of them to wash their linen with instead of 
soap. 
" In many of the Western Isles the people gain a very 
considerable profit from the sale of the ashes to soap and 
glass makers. 
" In Glen Ely, in Inverness- shire, and other places, we 
observed that the people thatched their houses with the 
stalks of this Fern, and fastened them down with ropes 
made either of Birch bark or heath. Sometimes they used 
the whole plant for the same purpose, but that does not 
make so durable a covering. 
" Swine are fond of the roots, especially if boiled in their 
wash. 
" In some parts of Normandy we read that the poor have 
been reduced to the miserable necessity of mixing them 
with their bread ; and in Siberia and some other Northern 
countries the inhabitants brew them in their ale, mixing 
one-third of the roots to two-thirds of malt. 
" The ancients used the root of this Fern, and the whole 
plant, in decoctions and diet-drinks, in chronic disorders of 
all kinds, arising from obstructions of the viscera and the 
