INTRODUCTION. 9 
‘mosses and lichens, shades it with a spreading beech 
tree, waters it with a dripping rock. All this may be 
done, if you will but become a loving and obedient 
. pupil of Nature. 
Ferns constitute so beautiful a portion of this 
world’s clothing, whether they drape our ruins with 
their floating and feathery foliage, wave their tresses 
from our weather-beaten rocks, or light up with 
evergreen verdure the crowns of picturesque forest- 
__ trees, ot the formal banks of our hedge-rows, that 
-It seems next to impossible to gaze on them without 
feelings of pleasure. 
Wherever, in days long past, some convulsion 
of the earth has opened a chasm in the mountain _ 
side, water is sure to flow, sometimes leaping 
noisily from rock to rock, sometimes just percolating | ue 
“the loosened stones, or dropping with the tinkling | : 
cadence of fairy bells,—there too, on each side, is sure 
» be found a picturesque growth of dwarfed forestry, 
bu of saturated moss, and a great variety 
ferns swayed to and fro by the mountain breeze and 
dripping with the pueden of waterfalls. Such chasms 
are there at. Pont 
