FEKNY COMBES. 
3 
Who will deny the fascination which flowers of 
the choicer kinds exercise over all. But to how 
few are they accessible ! The costly greenhouse, 
the highly-paid gardener, are requisite for their 
possession ; but what do the wild flowers cost ? 
Only the trouble of picking them ; and they, if 
people take the pains of looking for and examining 
them, have quite as many, though more humble, 
charms than their more aristocratic relations. 
“ Here ! smell this bunch of Butterfly Orchis. 
Did ever a greenhouse produce a flower with more 
exquisite scent?” 
“ But where did you find it ? I never saw it 
before.” 
“ Good friend, I plucked it by the side of a road 
you have passed a hundred times. Look at these 
dafibdils! — where will you find colour more bril- 
liant, texture more delicate ?” 
“ But they are such vulgar flowers ; they are so 
common !” 
“ My friend, I fear you are very vulgar, for men 
and women are very common on the earth.” 
Among the many pursuits that people follow 
nowadays, for instruction as well as mere amuse- 
ment, few have arisen in so short a space of time 
or deserve more attention than the study of that 
mysterious class of plants known as Ferns, which 
