OHAPTEK VII. 
THE FOLK-LOBE OF FEENS. 
It would have been strange indeed if plants so fairy- like ill 
form as Ferns had remained free from all association with 
the mysterious region which we call fairy-land. Fern-land 
by day must have been a veritable fairy-land at night ; and 
the graceful companions of Queen Mab doubtless disported 
themselves ecstatically amongst the feathery foliage of the 
shade-and-moisture-loving plants. 
The fairies must indeed have had an especial fondness for 
ferny forms, for they chose the twin leaflets of one of the 
graceful family to saddle their horses with. Shakespeare 
tells us of Queen Mab, that her waggon-spokes were 
‘ Made of long spinners’ legs ; 
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; 
The traces, of the smallest spider's web ; 
The collars, of the moonshine’s wat'ry beams ; 
Her whip of cricket’s bone ; the lash of film : 
Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat, 
Not half so big as a round little worm 
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid : 
Her chariot is an empty hazel nut, 
Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub, 
Time out of mind the fairies’ coaclimakers.’ 
But sometimes when riding alone she saddled her steed with 
the twin leaflets from the spike of Moonwort. Now this little 
Fern grows apart from its kind, on the open face of meadows, 
under the play of the moonbeams. Look, gentle reader, at 
its leaflets, and you will see how suggestively they shape 
