RAMBLES IN SEARCH OF FERNS. 
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CHAPTER II. 
“ The feathery fern, the feathery fern ! 
It growetli wide, and it groweth free, 
By the rippling brook, and the wimpling bum, 
And the tall and stately forest tree ; 
Where the merle and the mavis sweetly sing, 
And the blue jay makes the woods to ring, 
And the pheasant flies on whirring wing, 
Beneath a verdurous canopy.” — Anne Peatt. 
Soon after my first essay in the study of ferns, I found an 
opportunity to steal away quietly into that sweet wood alone. 
Making my way along the tangled path to a much greater distance 
than I had penetrated with Esther, I passed under some precipitous 
rocks, from which hung ivy and drooping ferns, and found myself in a 
shady part of the wood. Huge masses of the rock were strewn both 
in the narrow wood and in the bed of the little stream, revealing the 
fact, that peacefully as its waters now gurgled on, yet that winter 
storms could make it rush and roar till the whole of the gorge would 
be converted into a river’s bed, and the waters be mighty enough to roll 
the huge boulders from the hills beyond. The rock on which I seated 
myself was covered with stony pipes ; it was, in fact, a mass of fossil 
coral ; and in another of the boulders I recognised remains of the long 
extinct animal lilies ; while many had lain so long among the trees 
there, that they were covered with moss and rock plants, and the 
graceful ferns waved proudly over them, like cypresses marking the 
tomb of the corals and encrinites. I was geologist enough to know 
that another member of the same rock formation which contains these 
