76 
The Fern Garden . 
plant *n a cool house or a case, or in sheltered chinks 
in the open rockery. If it should ever speak it would 
be in such words as once startled the horticultural 
community, “ Give me air or I shall die.” Soil to be 
bricky and sandy ; fat peat is poison to it. 
A. fontanum — a gem for the case. 
A. ruta-muraria. — Stagnant moisture is ruin to it; 
plant with the crown quite above the surface ; soil one 
half broken brick or stone, the other half very sandy 
peat. A lovely fern for planting in a chink in an old 
wall in a shady sheltered spot. 
A. sepientrionale , a difficult fern to grow. Try it in 
a pot in a frame, in soil three parts sand and soft 
stone, and guard it with fear and suspicion against 
slugs, snails, and woodlice. 
Athyrium. — A. filix-fcemina is the Lady fern, and 
well deserves the title. Please excuse description or 
eulogy ; see it and believe. It will grow anywhere 
under glass, or in the open air, if in a shady moist 
position. I have a grand plant growing in the gravel 
walk at the foot of the bastion, and more than I can 
count in other places. A fine pot fern, growing well in 
fat peat or in common loam, with sand, or in any soil 
not chalky, with the help of a little cocoa-nut fibre to 
mellow it. Be sure to drain the pot effectually and 
give plenty of water. Oh, how it will smile upon you 
if you treat it kindly ! 
The following varieties are fine — Coronans, Corym - 
biferum , diffuso-multifidum , Elworthi , Fieldice, Frizellice, 
grandiceps , Grantice , multifidum. 
Blechnum.— B. spicans , the hard fern, is a noble 
