POLYPODTUM, 
119 
gons, young and old, are so slenderly mounted on their 
frail wires that they quiver at the touch of the dragon- 
fly or the whisper of the faintest zephyr. It perishes in 
the first frosts. This fern grows abundantly in England 
and Scotland, but is rare in Ireland. It likes moun- 
tainous situations, and loves a moist locality ne ily as 
well as the Pale Mountain Polypody. Not only does it 
flourish, like its congener, in the mountain grove, but 
among the stranded boulders on the margin of the 
stream, and in crevices of stone where the overhanging 
rock affords it the needful shelter, and the winds bring 
it its favourite bed of dead leaves. It is found in Nor- 
way, among the Swiss Alps and Spanish Pyrenees, the 
West Himalayas, Japan, North America, Siberia, and 
Greenland. 
This is an excellent plant for the fernery. When 
placed under shelter from sun and wind, in a compost 
of peat earth, leaf mould, and silver sand, it not only 
takes kindly to its new home and rewards its cultivator 
by throwing up verdant fronds, but in the course of the 
second or third season the caudex begins to creep in all 
directions, and form graceful landscapes as in its native 
wilds. We have seen lines of stems of the Oak-fern rising 
along the ledges of an artificial rockery, like miniature 
Scotch pines in the Highlands, and groups congregated 
together under shelter of some carefully-placed slab of 
limestone, like a tiny grove of birch among rocky heights, 
and all, both the quaintly scattered fronds and the shel- 
tering group, natural colonists from a bundle of plants 
located there some three or four years back. 
