42 
The Fern Garden . 
CHAPTER VIII. 
THE FERNERY AT THE FIRESIDE. 
HOUSANDS of amateur fern growers have 
only a glass case in the sitting-room for a fern 
garden. In the heart of a great city where 
gardens are unknown, and even the graveyards are 
desecrated by accumulations of filth, the fern case is 
a boon of priceless value. It is a bit of the woodside 
sealed down with the life of the wood in it, and when 
unsealed for a moment it gives forth an odour that 
might delude us into the belief that we had been sud¬ 
denly wafted to some bosky dell where the “ nodding 
violet grows.” Before we go a step further it is but 
just to the memory of a good man to call to mind that 
for many years the structures now commonly called 
“fern cases” were known as “Wardian cases,” being 
the invention of the late Mr. B. N. Ward, an eminent 
surgeon, many years resident in Finsbury Circus, who 
died at a ripe age in 1868. Peace to his memory ! He 
not only added to the embellishments of the English 
home and the recreations of English domestic life, but 
his invention has been of incalculable service in the 
introduction of valuable exotic plants to this country, 
for if shut up close in Wardian cases they travel over 
