WHAT IS A FERN ? 
99 
how many thousands of houses there are in big 
London alone without gardens ! — an attempt is 
made to compensate for its absence. Sometimes 
the windows are filled with plants — generally with 
flowers. Even the poor hovel, even the most 
wretched garret is provided with at least one 
solitary flower-pot, whose occupant, pining perhaps 
for the sun which can never reach it, drags on its 
sickly existence, until at length it dies under the 
influence of an unnatural atmosphere, struggling 
to the last moment with its abnormal condition of 
life. But it is rarely that ferns are to be seen 
under the same conditions ; and it is because we 
would show how it is that these lovely plants are 
admirably adapted to live under conditions which 
flowering plants cannot survive, that we have 
written these chapters. Here we feel that it will 
be necessary, before we proceed any further, to 
define the position ferns occupy amongst the great 
portion of the living world which we call the 
vegetable kingdom. 
The simple question then at once arises : What 
is a fern, and how is it to be distinguished from 
