THE FERN WORLD. 
INTRODUCTION. 
A would — apart — of dreamy beauty, of soft vapours and 
chequered sunbeams. A world — below the glare of noon- 
day — filled with the most delicate and graceful of the forms 
which Nature’s (fod has made to clothe the earth with a 
mantle of green. A world where Nature’s own sweet music 
— the silvery music of the streamlet’s ripple — falls, gently 
cadenced, on the ear : or where the stillness of repose is un- 
broken, even by the hum of insect life. A world sometimes 
of darkness relieved but by the faintest gleam of light ; 
sometimes of open rocks and streams, where the roar of the 
torrent echoes over the mountain side, and rushing water 
reflects the golden colouring of the sun-rays. A fairy world 
hidden away under the covering of rugged rocks on the sea- 
shore, beneath moss-covered stones in the river’s bed, or in 
the depths of the primeval forest. 
This same world of moisture and shadows is inhabited by 
various forms of plant life. The mysterious Fungus there 
makes its home. There, too, the Lichen creeps over its 
surface of stone or wood, the Sea-weed clings to its dripping- 
rock, and Mosses on floor of earth, wood, or stone, make a 
soft green carpeting. But above all these forms of vegeta- 
tion, yet in some degree related to them, stand the Ferns — 
B 2 
