The Fern Case. 
47 
the centre of the town a few old trees peering above the black roofs, and 
which, from their forms rather than their colours, are distinguishable from 
chimneys, and he may, with great care, preserve a gaiety in his narrow garden 
in the midst of darkness and smoke,; but to have real verdure in the freshness 
of its original strength and life, there is but one method, and that is by the 
culture of it in Wardian Cases. Not only may many ornamental plants be 
thus preserved in their full beauty in the midst of surrounding dust and the 
fumes of factories, but the rarest forms of vegetation readily submit to 
domestication, and attain their highest development of beauty in these cases, 
if the requirements of their constitution are severally fulfilled. 
It was in the year 1829 that the late Mr. Ward placed the chrysalis of a 
sphinx in some mould in a glass bottle covered with a lid, in order to obtain a 
perfect specimen of the insect. “ After a time, a speck or two of vegetation 
appeared on the surface of the mould, and to his surprise turned out to be a 
fern and a grass. His interest was awakened : he placed the bottle in a 
favourable situation, and found that the plants continued to grow, and 
maintain a healthy appearance. On questioning himself about the matter, 
the answers readily presented themselves, inasmuch as air, light, moisture, and 
other requirements of the plants were contained within the bottle.” 
This was the first Wardian Case. Mr. Ward extended the experiment, and 
arrived at the conclusion that certain kinds of vegetation readily adapt them¬ 
selves to an unchanged atmosphere in a close structure of glass, and to account 
for such an apparent departure from the recognised laws of vegetable growth, 
certain explanations as to the absorption of carbon and the evolution of 
oxygen were offered, and quite an elaborate theory of vegetable physiology 
was the consequence. It was admitted, reasonably enough, that it is impossible 
to make a Wardian Case on such a plan as wholly to exclude the outer air, 
but at the same time it came to be generally accepted that, for all practical 
purposes, such a case might be sealed hermetically, change of air, in the 
ordinary acceptation of the term, being quite at variance with the theory of 
vegetation as applied to these cases. Mr. Ward himself industriously taught 
that a plant-case is a self-supporting structure. Once set going, the exhaling 
moisture trickles down the glass, refreshes the herbage, and rises again to be 
again condensed, while the air in the case is alternately charged with excess of 
carbon or oxygen, the plants being always occupied in restoring it to a normal 
tone, spite of their tendency to vitiate it ; that, in fact, they create an 
atmosphere of their own, and thrive without external aid and independent of 
