same; that all foreign plants recently introduced,
and not changed by culture, must have been
weeds somewhere and at some time or other;
and that a plant requiring good gardening in
one country may elsewhere become a weed—
witness the very different behaviour of the
cardoon in England and in South America.

The names of ferns are a stumbling-block to
many; but, as Mr Smith remarks, the complaint
is more imaginary than real. Cultivators and
plant-amateurs not versed in scientific
literature have only to recollect that time and
use have made them familiar with such names as
Rhododendron, Hydrangea, Mesembryanthemum,
Elscholtzia, and many others now pronounced
as fluently as if they were original words of our
mother-tongue. For those who fancy they
would be more easily reconciled to long-sounding
names if they knew their meaning, he has
considerately drawn up a table showing the
derivation of the names of the genera of ferns.

Many of our native ferns have English names.
The Lady-fern, the Hart's-tongue, and the
Adder's-tongue speak for themselves. We, how-
ever—self and accompanying un-book-learned
fern-chasers—cut the Gordian knot by giving,
like Adam, names on our own responsibility,
retaining, however, the Ceterach, which is just
as easy as Almanack.

We are exploring a wood, singly, through thicket
and bramble, and keep up a communication
by interchanging "Hi!"s and "Ho!"s.

"Hi!"

"Ho!"

"Do come this way, I have found a fern I
never saw before."

"Surely not. You must have seen it. There
is nothing here new to us. Which way? Where
are you?"

"Straight on before you; on the other side of
the great oak. Make haste; there's a horrible
corpse-like smell, as if somebody had been
murdered here. We must search together for body."

"Here I am, then. You have seen the fern,
but never such beauties. It's the Fragile Fern
('fragile' being Latin, French, and English,
we so christen the Cystopteris fragilis); and
your murdered body is that group of ugly
right-up mushrooms, some of which are melting
into rottenness."

"So it is. What a pestilence!"

"Now that the Fragiles are safe in the basket,
let us try and find up a few old Emilies"
(Lastrea æmula).

"There may be young ones left, perhaps, but
we have already carried off every old Emily.
They're handsome, certainly, those very old
Emilies; but they make a deal of dirt in a
room [by scattering their spores], and you'll
turn yours out of doors before very long."

This same, "one of the most beautiful of all
the British species, being of moderate size,
gracefully pendulous in habit, and perfectly
evergreen,"* is (as the Hay-scented Buckler
Fern) an instance that by any other name an
Emily and a fern may smell as sweet.

* Moore.

The longevity of many ferns is another attaching
circumstance. They are not ephemeral friends
who, when they have had their day out of
you, leave you to reflect on the brevity of
vegetable companionships. They are—not with
the scanty exception of three only out of the
whole multitudinous order—transient animals
which flaunt through a summer and then fade
away, to revive no more. Their span of life
has often a duration co-equal with or exceeding
our own. We can, therefore, address our aged
pets in the affectionate words of the Scottish
song, "John Anderson my Jo, Fern, we've
clomb the hill together; and we'll sleep to-
gether at the foot, Fern Jo—unless you survive
me, planted out on my grave."

In 1820, Mr. Smith* found plants of Asple-=nium
marinum having fronds from two to four inches
in length, growing in a cave facing the German
Ocean, on the east coast of Scotland. Two
of these plants have been growing at Kew
from that time. Forty-seven years is a nice
little period during which to have kept a pot-
plant alive, leaving it, moreover, finer at the
end than at the beginning of the term. Of late
years, one of them was kept in the temperate,
the other in the tropical house. They have
become fine cæspitose or turfy plants, with
fronds varying from a foot to a foot and a half in
length. The greatest length of frond has been
attained by the plant indulged with a lodging in
the tropical house. It has even assumed the
character of a species native of the West Indies
and tropical America, and quite unlike the
original plant; thus showing that—like many
other ferns, as Polysticlmm aculeatum, the
Lastreas dilatata, and Male Fern, the Common
Hart's-tongue, and theCommonBrake—although
quite at home in the sunless cave, it can well
appreciate a warmer and better-supplied abode.

* Ferns: British and Foreign. BvJohn Smith.
A.L.S.

For ferns show themselves grateful for kindness
ness, when you do not carry it so far as to kill
them with it by over-syringing and sprinkling
of the leaves, by incessant re-pottings, or fidgety
changes of soil. As a rule, when a fern is once
well established and at home in its pot, let it
rest in quiet as long as it looks happy and
comfortable. It is not a creature fond of change,
any more than an oyster or a limpet is. Like
them, its food is brought to it by currents of
moisture in air and earth. Look at the species
which may be called domestic, fixing themselves
on church-walls, tombstones, and buildings of a
certain age; such as the Hart's-tongue, the Wall
Rue, the Common Polypody, and the Ceterach.
They thrive, without shifting, year after year,
lustre after lustre, and decade after decade;
as do the rock-loving kinds, the Aspleniums in
general. Whenever one of these has taken
kindly to a pot, however cramped, cracked, or
battered, and filled with never-mind-what sort
of rubbish, it is best to let well alone, and leave
the wilful thing to please itself. You want it
to grow in a pretty china vase, and in nice
black leaf-mould; and it won't. Very provoking,