22 
with light scales. About the middle of the frond the 
branches or pinnae gradually become shorter and shorter, 
until the last becomes less than an inch long, and close 
to the very stem or stump, (caudex) It should also be 
observed, that as they taper downward, they become more 
and more distant from each other.* The lowermost, in fine 
specimens, are often an inch and a half or two inches apart, 
and triangular in form. This plant may be mistaken by 
the uninitiated for the Male Tern, but if attention be paid 
to the circumstance of the remarkable narrowing down of its 
branches, and to its clusters of fruit being much nearer the 
edge of the leaflet, the difference of the species will be easily 
discovered. It varies from ten inches to two feet long and 
more. The lowest pair of branches often point downward. 
If we hold the frond up to the light, little transparent pores 
are sometimes visible, as in some of the St. John’s Worts. 
A curious fact is also worth noticing, that when the Fern 
begins to unfold, the branches or pinnae appear quite straight 
and not coiled-in at their extremities, as is generally the 
case with the Fern tribe. The side-veins of the leaflets 
alternate on the mid-vein with clusters of fruit near the 
extremity^ but not, as in the Common Polypody, at the 
extremity itself. If the veins are forked, hoth veins have 
these clusters, and, in this respect, also, differ from the Male 
Fern. The whole plant is likewise more pliant and flexible. 
This Fern is easily cultivated, if placed in bog earth or 
yellow loam, and supplied with abundance of moisture. It 
grows here most frequently on high ground upon black bog 
earth, near a rippling stream. Sometimes it locates itself in 
damp, open heathfields. 
We have found it on a wet hedge-bank overhanging a 
little stream in fields to the north of Avishays, near Chard ; 
on the bank of a gully near Alston, on Birch-hill Common, 
in the parish of Chardstock ; also at New Park, in Axminster 
parish ; and a little further onward in Hawkchurch ; in a 
boggy wood in the north-west of Uplyme ; and at Ham Lane, 
and a hedge-bank near Colmar Copse, in Stockland. We 
learn that it is within three miles of Charmouth, probably 
near Monk ton Wylde. 
The old Herbalists do not seem to have noticed this Fern. 
We have not therefore received any account of its healing 
* Plate II, fig. 12, not correct in this respect. 
