4 
TEENT COMBES. 
are, as most people are aware, a flowerless tribe, 
bearing, with one or two exceptions, their fructifi- 
cation at the back of their leaves, in brown masses, 
sometimes round, sometimes oblong. 
Here I would give a hint to young botanists, 
never to name a fern unless it is seeded, as many 
leaves of flowering plants greatly resemble some 
ferns in their outline and cutting. I have known 
more than one instance of persons fancying them- 
selves possessed of a rare fern, when in fact they 
had but the leaf of the common weed. 
Unlike general botany, which gives comparatively 
little pleasure after the flower is named, from the 
difiiculty of preserving the colour of the specimens, 
the study of ferns not only leads the collector into 
the most picturesque scenery and wildest haunts 
of nature, but by the winter fireside, or in the close 
rooms of our crow^ded cities, he has but to open his 
Fern-book” and the forms of his favourites appear 
before him as green and graceful as when they hung 
by the mountain torrent or waved in some quiet 
shady lane, bringing back to remembrance pleasant 
summer rambles amid lovely scenes, making the 
lieart swell with gladness at the recollection of the 
forms of beauty and purity on which he has been 
permitted to gaze. 
Some ferns are only to be found in certain situa- 
