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a mid-vein : the side-veins issue alternately from the mid- 
vein, either branched or unbranched. The fruit lies on one 
or both of these branches of the side-veins. The cover at 
first is white, a line or two long ; soon the clusters of fruit 
thrust off each their respective cover, and a dark mass alone 
appears. The fronds grow together in a tuft. Though this 
is not the Parsley Pern, some fancy it resembles parsley. 
It is certainly much more shining, stiff, and formal and this 
is not a mere summer resident. When bleak winter comes, 
and general vegetation ceases, it is visible on our walls and 
banks. It even retains its greenness and freshness until 
the end of May, when the child pushes aside the parent, 
and thin, slight, elegant, rolled-in buds indicate that new 
fronds are now being formed. The end of autumn comes 
before the ripe fruit appears and the plant is fully developed. 
We hardly know where to direct our different friends, as to 
the best place of procuring thriving and flourishing speci- 
mens. They are scattered in tolerable abundance through- 
out the whole district. We should recommend that they be 
taken from hedge-banks. It is no little satisfaction, that 
the beauty of nature has not been destroyed here by the 
miserable stone walls that so disfigure the fields of the mid- 
land counties. It would be a sorry sight to see, in this 
utilitarian age, our noble fences thrown down, nature’s ar- 
bour demolished, and flint walls alone visible, in three of 
the loveliest counties of good old xllbion. 
This Spleenwort is widely distributed throughout Europe, 
and North and South Africa. The English Pern collectors 
have also lighted on it in Madeira, and many of the Islands 
in the great Atlantic. 
The medicinal properties of this Pern were celebrated by 
older writers. Hoffman considered it as antiscorbutic, and 
Eay states that it was in use for cough, pleurisy, and asthma. 
Little is it now valued by modern practitioners. 
Gerarde remarks, ‘‘That it is called Adiantum (not 
wetted) ^ because the leaf, as Theophrastus saith, is never 
wet, for it casteth oft‘ water that falleth thereon, or being 
drowned, or covered in water, it remaineth still, as if it were 
dry, as Pliny likewise writeth.” This is not true, though 
* Tliis is the signification of the Greek word Adiantum. 
