



16 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
sheltered places. Sometimes itis found in more open as well as in 
rocky situations, though generally where it is well supplied with 
moisture; but warm moist woods and damp hedge-row banks are its 
favourite localities, a fact which Scott thus happily expresses :— 
** Where the copse wood is the greenest, 
Where the fountain glistens sheenest, 
Where the morning dew lies longest, 
There the Lady Fern grows strongest.” 
It is when growing in such situations, that it most fully supports 
the claim of supremacy in beauty over all the other native species, 
which is made in its behalf. “Dull indeed," Mr. Newman very 
justly remarks, “must be the perception, and cold the heart, that 
fails to appreciate its excessive loveliness;" and Mr. Edwin Lees, 
in his Botanical Looker-out, has some lines which claim for this 
plant a position, which few if any will dispute :— 
“When in splendour and beauty all Nature is crown'd, 
The Fern is seen curling half hid in the ground, 
But of all the green brackens that rise by the burn, 
Commend me alone to the sweet Lady Fern. 
< Polypodium indented stands stiff on the rock, 
With his sori exposed to the tempest’s rough shock ; 
On the wide chilly heath Aquilina stands stern, 
Not once to be named with the sweet Lady Fern. 
“ Filix-mas in a circle lifts up his green fronds, 
And the Heath Fern delights by the bogs and the ponds ; 
Through their shadowy tufts though with pleasure I turn, 
The palm must still rest with the fair Lady Fern. 
** By the fountain I see her just spring into sight, 
Her texture as frail as though shivering with fright ; 
To the water she shrinks—I can scarcely discern 
In the deep humid shadows the soft Lady Fern. 
** Where the water is pouring for ever she sits, 
And beside her the Ouzel, the Kingfisher flits ; 
There, supreme in her beauty, beside the full urn, 
In the shade of the rock stands the tall Lady Fern. 
** Noon burns up the mountain ; but here by the fall 
The Lady Fern flourishes graceful and tall. 
Hours speed as thoughts rise, without any concern, 
And float like the spray gliding past the green Fern." 

