94 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
to believe any wonder connected with the plant, and so it was 
a constant advertisement with the quacks. Even in Addison’s 
time “ it was impossible to walk the streets without having an 
advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who had 
arrived at the knowledge of the Green and Red Dragon, and 
had discovered the female Fern-seed. Nobody ever knew 
what this meant” (“Tatler,” No. 240). But to name all the 
superstitions connected with the Fern would take too much 
space. 
The name is expressive; it is a contraction of the Anglo- 
Saxon fepern , and so shows that some of our ancestors marked 
its feathery form; and its history as a garden plant is worth a 
few lines. So little has it been esteemed as a garden plant 
that Mr. J. Smith, the ex-Curator of the Kew Gardens, tells 
us that in the year 1822 the collection of Ferns at Kew was so 
extremely poor that “ he could not estimate the entire Kew 
collection of exotic Ferns at that period at more than forty 
species” (Smith’s “Ferns, British and Exotic,” introduction). 
Since that time the steadily increasing admiration of Ferns has 
caused collectors to send them from all parts of the world, so 
that in 1866 Mr. Smith was enabled to describe about a 
thousand species, and now the number must be much larger; 
and the closer search for Ferns has further brought into notice 
a very large number of most curious varieties and monstrosities, 
which it is still more curious to observe are, with very few 
exceptions, confined to the British species. 
figs. 
(1) Feed him with Apricocks and Dewberries, 
With purple Grapes, green Figs, and Mulberries. 
Midsummer Night's Drearn^ iii. 1, 169. 
(2) And its grandam will 
Give it a Plum, a Cherry, and a_Fig .—King John, ii. 1, 161. 
(3) Here is a rural fellow 
That will not be denied your Highness’s presence, 
He brings you Figs .—Antony and Cleopatra , v. 2, 233. 
A simple countryman that brought her Figs .—Ibid., 342. 
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