40 
HISTORY OF BRITISH FERNS. 
it is covered with silky, hair-like scales, and, if cut into, is 
found to have a soft inside, with a reddish, flesh-coloured 
appearance. And no doubt, when the herbage of its native 
plains fails, its leaves, too, dry up, both perishing from 
the same cause, but having no dependence the one on the 
other. Thus it is that simple people have been persuaded 
that in the deserts of Scythia there existed creatures which 
were half animal, half plant. 
