RAMBLES IN SEARCH OF FERNS. 
47 
The bristle-crowned seed vessels placed in the fork made by the deeply 
cut leaflets easily distinguishes the fern. 
On reaching Marazion Marsh we found plenty of firm land, but 
enough also of bog and numerous deep pools. That season had been 
a late one, and the delicate pink bells of the bog anagallis still 
quivered in the breeze, while a few spikes of the musk bartsia yet 
remained. But what was that stately plant growing under the shade 
of the scattered bushes at some distance from us, with its delicately 
tinted foliage and tall compound spire of seed ? In my eagerness I 
forgot the swampy nature of the ground, and springing forward 
found myself standing by the plant, ankle deep in water. I heeded 
not any such trifling personal inconvenience, for I had found the 
object of my ambition, the Royal fern, Osmunda, or Osman’s Roy. 
( Osrnundci Regalis, Fig. 7 and F). And it was not only one plant, 
hundreds were there growing under remnants of old wall and hedge. 
There, on the site of the old Jewish town, behind what may have 
been the carefully-planted fence of those ancient inhabitants of Mara 
Zion, those early miners and traders in Cornish tin, flourishes now the 
noble head of the English representatives of the still more ancient 
family — the family which flourished when rocks only a degree less 
ancient than those containing the ore were yet in course of 
formation ! 
The botanical lady of our party told me that old Gerarde speaks of 
this fern as “ Osmund the Waterman,” in allusion to an old tradition 
of a waterman living on the banks of Loch Tyne, and hiding his 
family among these tall ferns during an incursion of the Danes. 
The fronds of the plants growing in Marazion Marsh were four or 
five feet high, the fruitful ones still taller. The spores were contained 
in small cases like grains, growing in profuse abundance upon the 
many stalks of the branched spike at the top of the frond. I 
determined to return with the boy the following day to dig up some 
plants for Esther, but I found a letter waiting for me, containing her 
account of her return home, and various matters of interest. She, too, 
