50 
THE FEES' PARADISE. 
for him. He obtains a Fern-book; but after 
reading two or three pages he wearily throws it 
aside. Should it chance to contain coloured en¬ 
gravings of his favourites, he may linger for a few 
moments over it \ but when he has once scanned 
the artist’s efforts, he has seen all that he desires 
to see. 
It is the- old story. The language of science, as 
generally rendered by our scientific writers, is a 
language for the few, and science will never be 
popular until it is popularly taught. c The lan¬ 
guage of flowers ’ has been taught; cannot an 
attempt be made to teach the language of Ferns ? 
These beautiful plants seem to be especially 
designed for universal cultivation, for even the 
tiniest of the species in each of the numerous 
wonderful and exquisitely formed seed-cases con¬ 
cealed at the back of its fronds bears countless 
myriads of seeds. The common kinds of Ferns— 
common only in the sense of being plentiful—are 
to be found almost everywhere ; but the home of 
our native Ferns is Devonshire — ( the Garden of 
England.’ 
Amidst all our English counties, Devonshire 
