BRITISH FERNS. 
1 1 
FERNS FOR SHADY GARDENS. 
NATURE, in the process of evolution and adaptation of the innu- 
merable forms of life to equally innumerable different conditions, 
has practically divided the vegetable world into two broad classes — 
sun-lovers and shade-lovers. This fact is too often lost sight of 
in connection with our gardens, which, artificial as most of them 
are to a certain extent, and similar to each other in their 
limitation between formal walls and even by surrounding buildings, 
nevertheless are found to vary very widely as regards the said 
points of sunny exposure and its opposite. The growth of trees 
and large shrubs, either in the garden itself or in the adjacent 
ones, materially affects this, and hence in a very large majority of 
gardens, especially suburban ones, we find the culture of flowers 
heavily handicapped by lack of sunshine and free access to the 
breeze, the result being eminently unsatisfactory, drawn-out, 
leggy specimens, unhealthy and vermin-eaten, and with very 
inferior bloom — if they bloom at all — disfiguring the garden instead 
of ornamenting it. Obviously, however, this very drawback to 
sun-loving flowering plants constitutes an opportunity f r the Fern 
lover, and in this connection it is well to remember that Nature 
has provided other forms of beauty than mere brilliancy of colour, 
and that after a feast of this the appreciative eye turns with 
restful satisfaction to the contemplation of the delicate tracery of 
verdant foliage, especially if this foliage be replete with diverse 
fashioning and feathery grace, such as the Fern world presents in 
surpassing degree. Travellers of botanical tastes in the tropical, 
sub-tropical, and warmer temperate regions of the world invariably 
dwell with delight upon the Fern-clad valleys, glens, and ravines 
which they find on the higher levels of tire mountain districts, 
and in these days of photography we are most of us familiar with 
the ravishing aspect of Antipodean Fern paradises, in which huge 
Tree Ferns and their kin, grading down into the moss-like tiny 
growths of the filmy Fern tribe and their allies, the Selaginellas 
and Mosses, fill the entire field of view, losing absolutely nothing 
in beauty by their exclusiveness. Even in our Ferny glens or 
Devon, Cornwall, and many ocher of our western counties and 
. those of Ireland, we find fair approaches to such perfection, since 
although our native Ferns cannot aspire — except in a few cases 
under special treatment — to the dignity of the Tree Fern, they 
have even in their normal or common forms a marvellous delicacy 
under such congenial conditions, and a sufficient diversity of size 
and make to obviate monotony. When, therefore, to this initial 
charm we are enabled to add, by their sportive capacity, the 
