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Besides attending only to the situation and shape of the masses of fructification, Sir J. E. Smith first pointed out the utility of considering, also, their involucrum or enveloping membrane, as to its presence or absence, and to the manner of its opening or bursting to let the seeds escape. His observations on this subject formed a very important improvement in the science, and led him to establish the genera of ferns on a better and surer basis than they had previously been.

The number of known ferns amounts to between six and seven hundred, but there can be little doubt that very many more remain to be discovered. In Great Britain there are about fifty species, but so much more copious are they in intertropical

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countries, especially islands, that Plumier collected one hundred and sixty different species in Martinique and St. Domingo alone; and the native ferns of Jamaica, already known, amount to above two hundred.

Ferns, in general, prefer moist shady situations, though some grow on walls and rocks, and some on arid heaths. A considerable number, too, prefer the trunks and branches of old mossy trees. Their aspect is very various, but in general the frond is pinnated, the pinnæ gradually diminishing to the top, giving a beautiful feathery appearance. Sometimes, as in the hart's tongue fern (Scolopendrium) it is undivided, and sometimes the whole plant assumes the appearance of a palm, as in the arborescent polypody or tree cup-fern which rises to the height of twenty-five feet, and whose foliage is of the finest green and most elegant form.

In general, the root of ferns is very large, and sends off innumerable fibres, or cords, which are often of a perfectly black colour. The upper part of the root is covered with chaffy scales, which are sometimes so fine, and thickly set, as to resemble wool or down. The Polypodium Barometz is a memorable example of this. Its tubers are covered on all sides with such scales, of a gold colour, very fine, soft, and downy, whence, in India, it is named golden moss, and is used for stopping hæmorrhage in wounds. The tubers of this species sometimes rise out of the ground supported on their rootlets,

and the plant has been described in old books, as being a vegetable sheep growing on a stem, and devouring every other species within its reach. Its thick matted roots probably prevent other plants from growing near it, and, with a little assistance from art, it assumes a tolerably striking resemblance to a little sheep. It is a native of Eastern Chinese Tartary, and hence has been called the Tartarian Lamb. Darwin thus speaks of it:

Cradled in snow, and fann'd by arctic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz! thy golden hair;
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,
And round and round her flexile neck she bends;
Crops the grey coral moss, and hoary thyme,
Or laps, with rosy tongue, the melting rime;
Eyes with meek tenderness her distant dam,
Or seems to bleat, a vegetable lamb.

In a number of other species, as the golden polypody (Polypodium aureum) of the West Indies, and the hare's foot fern (Davallia canariensis) of the Canary islands, the tubers protrude above the surface of the ground, but not in so remarkable a manner as the Barometz. It is not a little curious,

too, that some, as the Asplenium bulbiferum, multiply their species by throwing out tubers from the stem and fronds, and that others, as the rootingleaved Woodwardia (Woodwardia radicans) of Madeira, and the rooting spleenwort (Asplenium rhizophyllum) of North America, protrude rootlets from the tops of their fronds, which penetrate the ground.

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In some of the lofty or arborescent ferns, the stem grows to a considerable thickness, that of the prickly-stemmed brake (Pteris aculeata) equalling the diameter of a man. The surface varies much, being in different species rough, smooth, chaffy, prickly, or downy; and I have before mentioned, that some American ferns are always covered with dust of a metallic appearance.

The experiments of modern times have proved that these vegetables may be raised from their seeds; but, as they bear no flower, in the common acceptation of the word, many of the older botanists thought that they multiplied by the root only. So numerous, however, are the seeds in reality, that it is supposed one hundred millions may be produced by a single frond of some species. While the herbalists were denying the existence of seeds in ferns, a belief in them was very general with the people at large, especially amongst the lower classes; but it was imagined that they could only be seen on St. John's night at the hour when the Baptist was born, and that whoever became possessed of them was thereby rendered invisible. In Henry the Fourth, Gadshill says to the Chamberlain "We steal as in a castle, cock-sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible." "Nay, by my faith, (says the Chamberlain,) I think you are more beholden to the night, than to fern-seed, for your walking invisible." The fern-seed, ga

sess many magical properties, and the supposed possession of it was turned to a profitable account by pretenders to sorcery. It was believed, too, that the gathering it was not a little hazardous, since sometimes the collector had a battle with the enemy of mankind, or rather he got a severe drubbing from hands which he could very sensibly feel, but could not see. This is alluded to by Leyden in the following lines, which, however, are not written in his happiest manner :

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But on St. John's mysterious night,
Sacred to many a wizard spell,
The time when first to human right
Confest the mystic fern-seed fell;
Beside the sloe's black knotted thorn,
That hour the Baptist stern was born-
That hour when heaven's breath is still,-
I'll seek the shaggy fern-clad hill,
Where time has delved a dreary dell,,
Befitting best a hermit's cell;

And watch 'mid murmurs muttering stern,
The seed departing from the fern,

Ere wakeful demons can convey

The wonder-working charm away,

And tempt the blows from arm unseen
Should thoughts unholy intervene.

The twenty-fourth of June is Midsummer, or St. John's day, and in many parts of Europe is held in a manner analogous to Allhallows eve in Scotland. In Ireland, some innocent freets, as they are called, such as dreaming on the leaves of the mountain ash, or confining a slug or naked snail under a bowl all night, to ascertain what letter its track may form, as the initials of the name of the fated lover,

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