206 
THE PERN PARADISE. 
often found dark and cool recesses, into the depth 
of which it is difficult to peer until the eyes have 
become accustomed to the gloom which pervades 
them. Sometimes these recesses are of large and 
sometimes of small extent; but they are nearly 
always found associated with falling or dripping 
water, with mossy stones, and with ferny forms. 
It may be a rocky cavern in the hill-side, the tiny 
chasm in a river bank, or perhaps but the dark 
fissure in the moist embankment of a shady lane, 
through which, from the higher level above, water 
perpetually trickles. The enthusiastic Fern- 
hunter will instantly recall to his mind many 
such tiny caverns as these hedge-bank fissures 
furnish, and the intense enjoyment which he ‘has 
experienced when, during the sultry heat of 
summer, he has wandered into some cool, green 
lane, passed under the shadow of overarching 
shrubs, and paused to rest on some big stone 
conveniently found fronting a dripping hollow 
in the hedge-bank. 
Peering into such a tiny hedge-bank cavern he 
may wonder, whilst he watches with pleasure the 
diamond sparkle of the dripping water within, 
