74 
The Fern Garden . 
choose from for the materials for a fern garden. If 
the reader has no innate horror of statistics, a few 
figures may be interesting. It must be understood 
that amongst the varieties are many extremely curious 
plants. Some are richly tasselled and fringed, some have 
duplicated fronds, and the variations otherwise com¬ 
prise imitations (or resemblances to) stag’s horns, frills, 
fans, wires, bristles, embroidery, braiding, puckering, 
and embossing. Some of the varieties are notched as 
if a child had cut faces out of them, others are shrunk 
up to mere stalks; some have spores on the wrong side, 
that is to say, on upper side of the fronds, others never 
produce spores at all, and a few produce their offspring 
ready made in the form of little plants at the points of 
their fronds or on every part of their leafy surface. 
Some varieties are so curious, so rare, and so difficult to 
multiply that they range in price from one to five guineas 
a plant. This need not terrify the humble fern collec¬ 
tor, for many of the handsomest may be bought for a 
shilling each. The catalogue prices of 319 kinds enu¬ 
merated in Sim’s catalogue amount to <£130 105.—say 
if those not priced be added, £200 for one plant each of 
the 365. The varieties of hartstongue alone are about 100 
in number, and to buy one each would cost in the aggre¬ 
gate £50. Here ends the statistical statement. Now let 
us hastily run through the list of British ferns, saying 
nothing about synonyms or knotty points in classifi¬ 
cation, for with these matters we cannot now have 
anything to do. For our purpose an alphabetical 
arrangement will be best. 
Adiantum. —A . capillus veneris , the true maiden- 
