P ter is.] 
FERNS. 
61 
and they bear neither flower nor seed.” Culpepper writing upon this Fern, 
which was in his time called Female Fern, “ the seed of which,” he observes, 
“ some authors hold to be so rare,” says, “ such a tiling there is, I know, and 
may be easily had upon Midsummer eve, and for aught I know, two or three days 
after it, if not more.” The supposed circumstance of its seeding upon a single 
night, occasioned it to be called in Brown’s ‘ Pastoral Ballads ’ (1 613) — 
“ The wondrous, one-night-seeding feme." 
Butler alludes to this superstitious notion (‘ Iludibras,’ Part III, cant, iii, 3, 4) : 
“ That spring like fern, that insect weed, 
Equivocally without seed.” 
Absurd as these notions are, they were not wholly exploded in the time of 
Addison. He laughs at a doctor “who was arrived at the knowledge of the 
green and red dragon, and had discovered the female fern seed.” Then again, in 
the dawn of botany and medicine, when affinities and antipathies, or, as it was 
called, the doctrine of signatures, was supposed to rule all things, we find that 
this Fern must be good for reed wounds (punctured wounds), because, Dioscorides 
saith, “ the fern dieth if the reed be planted about it ; and, contrariwise, that the 
reed dieth if it be compassed with fern,” which, as Gerard justly tells us, “ is vaine 
to thinke that it liapneth by any antipathic or natural! hatred, and not by reason 
that this feme prospereth not in moist places, nor the reed in dry.” Another 
result of the admirable and scientific reasoning of Dioscorides was once prevalent 
in this country, that, because Fern seed was invisible, therefore, forsooth, those 
who earned it about them were rendered invisible also. This circumstance relative 
to Fern seed is alluded to in Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘ Fair Maid of the Inn :’ 
“ Had you Gyges’ ring ? 
Or the herb that gives invisibility ?” 
Again, in Ben Jonson’s play of the ‘ New Inn :’ 
“ I had 
No medicine, Sir, to go invisible. 
No Fern seed in my pocket.” 
Also, in Shakespere’s ‘ Henry IV,’ Part I, though here spoken ironically, Gadshill 
says — “ We have the receipt for Fern seed, we walk invisible.” 
Several other country adages attach themselves to the Fern, as the following : 
“ When the Fern is as high as a spoon, 
You may sleep an hour at noon ; 
When the Fern is as high as a table, 
You may sleep as long as you ’re able." 
Passing, however, these absurdities, of which many others might have been 
adduced, we may remark that very few of our poetical writers have thought the 
Fern tribe worth tlieir attention. Miss Twamley, however, is an exception ; she 
has many passages in the ‘ Romance of Nature,’ and other works, which relate 
to them. She speaks of “the fan-like Ferns, which seem poised still and 
sleepily until the morn returns.” In another place, — 
“ The Ferns, too, are waving all statelily here, 
With seed-stored fronds thickly laid : 
And shedding, when hastily brushed by the deer 
Their light fertile dust o’er the glade.” 
