36 
THE USES OF FERNS. 
We cannot make out a long catalogue of the uses of 
Ferns. Indeed, compared with their numbers and size, 
their usefulness to man is very limited; and the frigid 
utilitarian might be almost tempted to ask of Nature, 
wherefore she gave them birth. Her reply would, however, 
stay further interrogation : “ They are given 
* To minister delight to man, 
To beautify the earth.’ ” 
The Ferns are not, moreover, altogether without their 
use; for to the aborigines of various countries they furnish 
a rude means of subsistence. The pith of the stem or 
rhizome is the part usually employed for food, and this on 
account of the starch deposited in its tissue. Among the 
species which are thus employed as food—chiefly, however, 
where civilization has not become the dispenser of better 
fare—there is the Cyathea medullar is, Marattia alata and 
elegans , Angiopteris evecta; Pteris esculenta , the Tasma¬ 
nian Tara ; Nephrolepis tuberosa, Diplazium esculentum , 
