THE SPLEENWORTS. 
269 
It grows in the moist interstices which lie between 
the fragments of stone. But it mostly loves a 
rocky home in immediate contiguity to the soft 
vapour of the wild cascade. It delights to grow 
in the tiny trickle caused by percolating water. 
Little wiry fibrous roots, that plunge within 
the hearts of rocks in search of the soft 
veins of leaf-mould ; a black, tufted root-stock, 
from which start the lovely fronds ; a short 
stipes, purple at its base, but beyond of a vivid 
and delightful green ; a rachis of the same de- 
lightful green, and on each side of it, placed in 
alternation, a row of tiny-stemmed, egg-shaped, 
saw-edged leaflets, diminishing in size as the tiny 
frond tapers to a point. Each root-stock produces 
these pretty little fronds in thick clusters, so that 
a luxuriant specimen of the plant presents a de- 
lightfully fresh appearance. The fronds grow to 
various heights, their luxuriance depending on the 
favourable or unfavourable nature of the situation 
in which the plant grows. Sometimes they are not 
more than an inch in height ; sometimes they are 
two or three, occasionally as much as eight or ten. 
