THE USES OF FERNS. 
83 
<£ Cradled in snow, and fann’d by arctic air, 
Shines, gentle Barometz, thy golden hair ; 
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends, 
And round and round her flexile neck she bends, 
Crops the gay coral-moss, and hoary thyme, 
Or laps with rosy tongue the melting rime, 
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam, 
Or seems to bleat, a vegetable Lamb !” 
It is a proof how far imagination can delude reason, 
when the poet could endow the hairy caudex and stems 
of a fern with a “ rosy tongue,” “ cloven hoofs,” and 
eyes beaming “ mute tenderness for its distant dam.” 
Of course Darwin drew his figure from the description 
of others ; had he been able to test facts by the evidence 
of his own senses, his “Vegetable Lamb” would have 
appeared under a very different aspect. 
Duchesne names two species of Osmunda endowed 
with useful qualifications ; one, Osmunda cicutaria , a 
native of St. Domingo, was used as a plaster to cure the 
bite of serpents; and another, Osmunda lancea , was 
accounted a good medicine in affections of the liver. 
He also records that a nourishing and fairly good dish 
was made from these plants during the siege of St. 
Domingo, but we can attach no more faith to the ex- 
cellence of cookery in time of siege, when food is 
hardly attainable, than to the diet used by the negroes 
in the Isle of Trance, “ more especially during seasons 
of fasting.” 
The Adder’s-tongue was formerly much used by the 
people of Scotland in making ointment, according to 
Lightfoot. This ointment is still made bv the medical 
herbalists of America, and the herb may be purchased 
in all our large towns for that purpose, but the fresh 
fronds make better ointment. Old wives have never 
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