DISTRIBUTION 
2 9 
sible to be, we would here take the opportunity of inviting 
the co-operation of our readers, by asking them to furnish 
us with any facts of interest bearing upon any new localities 
— not here enumerated — in which Ferns have been found. 
The object of this chapter will be to indicate the situations 
in which Ferns love to grow, having regard to the general 
character or nature of the locality, the aspect, the position in 
relation to the surface of the ground, and to the natural 
features of the country, and to the nature and constitution of 
the soil. If this part of the subject be mastered — and there 
is little difficulty in mastering it — the reader will know, 
wherever he may chance to be, whether he is in or near the 
confines of any portion of the Fern world ; and when once he 
has carefully noted his whereabouts, he can easily ascertain 
whether the conditions which promote ferny growths are 
present or absent. 
Ferns are associated with the most beautiful portions of 
this world’s surface. The most graceful of Nature’s garments, 
they seek to clothe, not the dull expanse of level plain, or the 
bare, straight side of hill or mountain. They do not grow 
on sandy flats, on the even margin of a sluggish river, or 
on the smooth and rockless lines of sea coast. Where the 
scorching sun-rays fall unscreened upon arid earth, and 
where no shadows relieve the course of a far-reaching ex- 
panse of open country, no ferny growths are found. It is 
where nature is in her wildest moods, and assumes her 
grandest aspects, or where the beauty which is spread over 
rock and wood and stream is of that dreamy kind which most 
powerfully stirs the imagination and enthrals the soul, that 
Ferns are found in the greatest perfection, waving their grace- 
ful fronds in response to the mountain breeze, orbending under 
the weight of spray drops flung upon them from the impetuous 
mountain torrent. 
Ferns love to grow where the land is musical with run- 
