102 
The Fern Garden . 
adviser on their cultivation would dare to recommend 
as good for them. Fully half of the whole number of 
stove ferns known to cultivators have been well grown 
in greenhouse temperature, and a very large proportion 
of greenhouse ferns, properly so called, have been 
grown to perfection, without any aid from artificial 
heat, in our own garden. Our large specimens of 
Adiantum cuneatum, Asplenium biformis, Blechnum 
brasiliense, &c. &c., that we have exhibited in public, 
have never known a taste of artificial heat from the 
time when they started from spores under bell-glasses 
until they attained their present dimensions of a yard 
or so across. This adaptability is particularly exempli¬ 
fied in the cultivation of ferns in closed cases, Mrs. 
Hibberd's cases containing delicate ferns of the tropics 
side by side with the natives of the British woods, yet 
all in the most perfect health and beauty. 
The soil for pot ferns should always consist in great 
part of vegetable mould and sand; mellow loam, silky 
to the touch and crumbling to powder between the 
fingers without soiling them; peat of a brownish rather 
than a blackish cast, and containing an abundance of 
vegetable fibre, so as rather to require tearing than 
crumbling to reduce it; sand of a sharp clean nature : 
these three ingredients are sufficient for the prepara¬ 
tion of a universal fern compost. In the case of very 
small delicate habited ferns use two parts peat, re¬ 
moving all the rougher portions, and one third sand. 
For full growing and rather large plants use two parts 
peat, one part loam, and one part sand, the rougher 
fibrous portions to be laid over the crocks, and the 
