6 
The Fern Garden . 
kinds are expected to be found, a large basket, or better, 
a pair of baskets of moderate size, such as can be car¬ 
ried one in each hand, will be necessary. They should 
have close fitting lids, because if ferns are taken up on 
a hot day and exposed for some hours to the atmo¬ 
sphere, the crowns and roots will be so much exhausted 
that some may die, and all will be injured, whereas by 
packing them close with a little moist moss amongst 
them, the roots and crowns will be kept tolerably fresh 
until they can be potted or planted out. A short- 
handled three-pronged fork and a trowel, and a strong 
clasp knife, will be needful; and in some instances it 
will be necessary to borrow a spade or digging fork near 
the spot where operations are to take place, for fine old 
roots of royal osmund and other large-growing ferns 
will defy the leverage of all small hand tools. When 
ferns of large size are taken up in the height of summer, 
it is best to cut away all or nearly all their fronds at 
once , and use those fronds as packing material . 
On reaching home, the best treatment to subject them 
to is to pot them all separately in the smallest pots 
their roots can be got into, with cocoa-nut fibre alone 
or the fibre of good peat or leaf-mould, and shut them 
up in a frame, and keep only moderately moist until 
they start into growth. As at this early stage of the 
study I may suppose you do not know how to pot them 
and restore their energies, I will endeavour to point out a 
simpler mode of procedure. Find a very shady place 
in the garden and there make a bed of leaf mould or 
peat soil, or cocoa-nut fibre refuse, and plant the ferns 
in it as close together as possible. Then cover them 
