PREFACE. 
XXI 
market and the rent day ! There are antiquities of Nature’s 
wildness, scarcely less deserving protection and preservation, 
than the antiquities of masonry in ruin ; and if the country 
scenes of our land become destitute of all that is rustic, pic- 
turesque, and worthy of scientific research — if every hedgerow 
that ventures to luxuriate in a rose or honeysuckle, must be 
trimmed or levelled — if every marshy nook, 
“Where the morning dew lies longest, 
Where the female Fern grows strongest,” 
rank with reed and sedge, and with their shelly and insect 
peoples, must be submitted to drainage, must be cleared, and 
be made to pay — then will the tendency of our population, 
now already too strong to gather into towns, and to abandon 
the open parts of the country, spread, in self-defence, even 
among those who love the country best ; Nature must then 
be studied in books, and in museums, or in foreign lands ; 
and our British Floras and Faunas will become historical re- 
cords of what England once was, before this Utilitarian Age 
began. But if the lover of Ferns has much to fear from the 
plough, the draining- tile, and the axe, he has an equally blank 
prospect of desolation before him, through the rapacity of 
Traders in his favourite tribe. A bearded dealer in our North- 
ern Fern-treasures visits the Southern counties, to present 
the bait of a host of captive Woodsias, stolen away from their 
remote mountain homes, and offered in exchange for Ferns 
of the lowland ! In a few years, what must be the inevitable 
issue ?* Even private botanists are found to gather plants 
with no sparing hand ; and if our island is still to be 
counted the habitat of a native Flora, we would earnestly 
commend the lovers of plants that are to come after us, to 
the consideration of existing collectors. Some eager eye, 
intent upon a full vasculum, may smile at the thought ; but 
permit us to repeat it — Those who are to follow us, are as 
worthy of regard as we ourselves were by those who 
preceded us. They loved and studied Ferns, they laboured 
* Dovedale is already stripped to the bare rock of its Ferns. 
