i8 
THE FERN PARADISE. 
yon projecting spur ! There you may see, far out 
of your reach, one of the most rare and exquisite of 
the British ferns — the Maidenhair ( Adiantum ca- 
pillus-veneris ). Could you venture near enough to 
grasp it in your hand, you would indeed recognise 
that it is one of the most beautiful of plants. Its 
fine black wiry frond-stems, like a dark maiden’s 
hair — it is most appropriately named, — rise in 
clusters from its crown, the main frond-stems 
being branched with smaller and more beautiful 
hair-like stems, which bear upon their tender 
points the delicate light-green fan-shaped leaflets. 
Wandering through the cool lanes of Devonshire 
you may, too, meet with the fragrant hay-scented 
Buckler Fern (Lastrea oermila ), which emits so beau- 
tiful an odour when pressed in the hand ; with the 
delicately and transparently-leaved Marsh Buckler 
Fern ( Lastrea thelypteris) ; with the Mountain 
Buckler Fern ( Lastrea Montana ), whose silvery 
fronds make the air fragrant when you tread upon 
them in their incipient unrolled state. But these 
varieties are not to be commonly encountered in 
every Devonshire lane. And still rarer — though 
