THE COMMON MAIDENHAIR SPLEENWORT. 107 
usefully employed in affections of the chest and lungs; and Lightfoot 
states that the country people in Scotland made from it a tea and a 
syrup, both of which were taken as remedies for coughs and com- 
plaints of the chest, though seldom used in the shops. This Fern 
is also sometimes referred to in old medical books as the source from 
which the syrup called Capillaire is prepared. Turner, in his 
Herball, published so long ago as 1568, calls it English Mayden's 
Heare, and says that *the juice stayeth the heare that falleth of, 
and if they be fallen off, it restoreth them agayne.” 
This plant grows with tolerable facility under artificial cultivation, 
but still.is very apt to suffer if kept too damp under confinement, 
and cannot be said to submit freely to domestication. A compost of 
porous loamy soil containing a considerable proportion of sand and 
such hard but porous materials as broken sandstone, bricks, or old 
mortar, should be used, and excess of moisture must be avoided. In 
open rockeries in the pure air of country situations it succeeds well, 
when due precaution is taken against stagnant moisture, but in town 
gardens it requires a certain amount of shelter, and still more care is 
necessary to guard against the effects of too much moisture. In the 
greenhouse or frame, it seems impatient of confinement. 
Mr. Wollaston, who is a very successful grower of Ferns, has 
remarked that this species succeeds best with him planted in sandy 
loam, with a very slight admixture of perfectly decayed leaf-mould, 
over plenty of drainage without moss above it, and with a free use 
of water, and thorough ventilation. “Finding it,” he writes, 
* difficult to manage, I tested it in the following way :—I took six 
seedlings of A. Trichomanes cristatum of the same age, and as nearly 
as possible of the same size, and planted them in pots of the same 
size, but all in different admixtures of soil, giving them otherwise 
the same treatment. That planted in sandy loam did best, very 
pereeptibly ; that in sandy peat did worst; and that in pure leaf- 
mould was bad also." 
Mr. C. Johnson * describes the species now under consideration as 
being easily cultivated, and admirably adapted for decorating shady 
* Sowerby, Ferns of Gt. Brit., 53. 

