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The common moonwort is another elegant fern which grows on open places, flourishing on hilly pastures and wide heaths, almost throughout our island. This is one of the ferns much esteemed in the olden days of "simpling." Gerarde says of it: "It is singular to heal green and fresh wounds;" and adds, that it had been used by witches to "do wonders withal;" and many were the calamities which were said to befall the horses who eat it as pasturage. The alchymists, those old dreamers, valued this plant much. Among them it was known as the martagon, and they sometimes wandered from their dim laboratories to the breezy heath, to gather the moon wort, which was to be collected only what time

"The moonbeam sleeps upon the bank,"

and went back probably with handfulls of the plant, to the weary work of transmuting the humbler metals into gold, uncheered by any success save now and then, by the discovery of some fact of real science, which, like the finding of phosphorus and the sulphate of soda, called Glauber's salts, might, in some measure, redeem their labours from the charge of being worse than useless. Better both for body and mind had it been that they should have left their dreams of gold and silver, and sturdily cultivated some of those wild waste lands on which they sought the moonwort. This plant may be distinguished from the other ferns by its frond, composed of leaflets crowding on its stem, and each leaflet of a crescent shape. Our native species is a small fern. One kind of moonwort is known in North America, as the rattlesnake fern, as it is said to grow very abundantly in those lands which this formidable reptile frequents.

On the old church wall, or on the fissure of the rock, we may often find some species of a very pretty fern-the spleenwort. The wall-rue, with its leaves something like the garden-rue in shape, is often quite covered in its under surface with masses of brown fructification. It was once found that this fern would cure all diseases of the spleen, and that if used to excess it would totally destroy the organ. There are several British species growing mostly on rocks; one kind, the sea spleenwort, being found only on rocks near the ocean.

The fern called the true maidenhair, puts forth its tender green fronds in May,

on damp rocks and walls, especially near the sea; but it is not a common plant. The slender delicate stalks of some of the species on which the small leaflets are waving to the air, suggested its familiar name. Loudon says of the maidenhair, that it is the prettiest of all ferns; and professor Hooker remarks, that he has seen the graceful fern lining the inside of wells, in the south of Europe, with a tapestry of the tenderest green. It is very abundant there. Its scientific name, Adiantum, was made from the Greek word, "to dry;" and Pliny says of it, "In vain you plunge the Adiantum into water, it always remains dry." The true maidenhair has a pleasant and delicate odour, and when boiling water is poured on it, it yields a rough mucilaginous extract, which is considered useful in pulmonary complaints. A syrup of this plant, flavoured with orange-flower water, is brought from France, and sold as a remedy for cough; and it is from this fern that confectioners prepare the syrup which they call capillaire. The Canadian maidenhair, sometimes cultivated in this country, and brought hither from Virginia by John Tradescant, is often used by the Parisian apothecaries instead of the true maidenhair; and Kalm says that an infusion of it has been used from time immemorial by the North American Indians for complaints of the lungs. This plant is so abundant in Canada, that when the French were in possession of that country they were accustomed to send it to France as a package for goods.

Some handsome species of polypody are among our native ferns, growing chiefly on shady banks and the trunks of trees, and forming near the surface of the soil a thick matwork of entangling roots. The common species called polypody of the oak, when burnt, yields a quantity of carbonate of potash, which is sometimes used in preparing flint for the manufacture of glass.

As early as May we find the glossy green Grammitis on the old church wall, or the calcareous rock, or the trunks of trees; and in the autumn the under part of its frond is crowded with the brown capsules. One species is the celebrated Chehterach of the Persian physicians. At the same season, too, the little narrow-pointed green leaves of the common adder's tongue, peer up on their long stalks among the meadow-grass, and might well suggest to our forefathers the

resemblance of a snake's tongue half | the Sandwich Isles use one kind of fern hidden among the verdure.

to make an aromatic, with which they perfume their fixed oils; and of another the Brazilian negroes make tubes for their pipes.

Several very pretty ferns are now com

On mountainous rocks and hills some pretty species of the bladder-fern may be found; and two species of the filmyfern are wild in our island. One of these is known as the Tonbridge filmy-monly reared in this country in those fern, from having been first discovered at that place; but it grows among the moss on moist rocks of mountainous countries, and is abundant in the northwest of England, and in Wales, as well as in some parts of Ireland. It is a tender and delicate fern, and possesses a degree of elasticity.

But more delicately beautiful perhaps than any other British species is that delight of the botanist, the rare bristle fern, or Trichomanes, with its clear thin foliage. Seldom does the English ferngatherer add this to his collection; but it is found in great beauty beside the lake of Killarney, and also in other parts of Ireland. Its scent and texture resemble those of the sea weeds, and its appearance combines the characters of the true ferns, mosses, and marine weeds. The beauty of those species of Trichomanes, which unite with the canary houseleek in covering with verdure the old roofs and walls of Laguna, in Teneriffe, is mentioned by almost every traveller who visits that city. Deserted and barren as are the old streets and houses, yet, as Humboldt observes, botanists cannot complain of them, for the antique structures give a resting place to this most elegant fern, which is nourished by the frequent fogs with which the atmosphere is filled.

We have before remarked, that of all the cryptogamous plants the ferns are the most beautiful. Perhaps of all they are the least useful to the arts or domestic purposes of civilized life. Their shadow, even when they attain to trees, is small and flickering, and is too little to be welcomed anywhere unless it were found on some desert spot, where even the sight of a green leaf would seem like a refreshment. The fern tribe yields no luxuries and little nutritious food, yet thousands of men in savage life subsist on its roots, and some who dwell in cities, as we have seen, make their bread of its flour. The leaves of several sorts contain a thick mucilage, and their uses in medicine have been adverted to. Some species have been used in beer, and a scented kind of shield fern has been substituted for tea. The natives of

closely-glazed cases in which Mr. Ward has so successfully cultivated even the most rare plants. These glass cases, so often placed in the window of London houses, seem particularly well fitted for the ferns, as moisture and shade can both be had by this contrivance; and it is delightful to see the bright frond of the fern flourishing in the midst of smoky crowded places, unhurt by the sudden alternations of cold and heat, or by the heavy fogs which hang in the atmosphere. These glass-cases have also much facilitated the observation of the growth and changes of plants, and they afford to those who cannot rove at will into the fields or over the mountain, a wreath of flowers as pure and bright as those which could be found there. By means of these cases plants have also been conveyed to us which no skill has ever before availed to save from perishing, amid the various changes of temperature to which they must otherwise be exposed.

The seeds of ferns have excited much attention among botanists; for the old writers thought that the brown masses which we by the aid of the microscope discern to be capsules or bags, were themselves the seeds. In some centuries earlier, the fern tribe were thought to produce seeds very rarely, and by many believed to increase by root only; but the seeds were thought to have the power of rendering him who gathered them invisible—a legend which would have been probably forgotten had not some of our older poets alluded to it in their dramatic writings.

Until late years the vegetation of the seed of ferns was supposed to be remarkably slow; but Loudon mentions several instances in which they seem to have vegetated with tolerable rapidity. Thus some seeds of a fern brought from Jamaica on the 10th of July in 1817, were brushed off and sown, and the plants perfected seeds by the 5th of August in the following year. Some ferns sent were from Serampore by Dr. Carey, who, amid all his diligent zeal in preaching the word of God, yet loved to mark also the works of God in nature; and these plants, having reached Liver

pool July 10th, 1818, and their seeds sown immediately, they produced some plants by the 18th of September.

The term Novaccola, or new settlers, which Linnæus gave to the ferns, is very appropriate; for barren lands are colonized by these beautiful plants long before the other tribes of plants, the gay flowers, and the umbrageous trees, could take root there. After the lichens and mosses have done their work on the barren heaths or the coral rocks, then the ferns gather together above them. Such, Burnet has observed, were doubtless the primeval operations by which the earth was fitted for man's abode; for from the strata in which ferns are found, it is more than probable that they preceded and prepared the way for the production of many other vegetables, for the higher animals, and for the human race.

The oldest fossil vegetable remains exhibited by the earth's strata, consist almost entirely of the gigantic fern tribe, other plants seeming few in number compared with them. Dr. Lindley remarks that "even in these islands where the ferns form an unconspicuous feature in the vegetation, grasses, herbs, and trees were represented by herbaceous and arborescent ferns and fern-like plants; and earth had, in its oldest stages, forms and developments of plants as well as of animals quite different from those of modern days." This writer, however, | remarks that the same enormous disproportion between ferns and the rest of the flora is even now exhibited in some tropical islands, such as Jamaica, where they are one-ninth of the flowery plants. Dr. Mantelo mentions that some of the tree ferns found in the carboniferous strata of our land are fifty feet in height; and arborescent club-mosses attained a height of sixty or seventy feet, while plants similar to the mare's tail, which, as we shall presently state, is a fern-like plant, are sometimes eighteen inches in circumference, and ten or twelve feet high. And this was the vegetation which once prevailed, where now the woods and forests and the grassy turf present features as unlike to those of the olden eras, as the gigantic fossil remains of the animal world are unlike the living groups which are now subject to man's sway.

There are about fifty species of British ferns; but so much more abundant are these plants in intertropical countries, especially in islands, that one botanist collected one hundred and sixty different

species in the islands of St. Domingo and Martinique only.

It was

Botanists generally include in this tribe some flowerless vegetables, nearly allied in some particulars to the true ferns, but which are more justly called fern-like plants than ferns. The clubmosses are considered as intermediate between the true ferns and the mosses; for they have the seeds of the former plants, although their much greater resemblance to the mosses would induce the general observer to class them with the latter. They grow occasionally to a height of two or three feet, but their stems are mostly prostrate. They are abundant in damp moist situations in tropical lands; and though generally fewer towards the north, yet in Sweden and Lapland they are sufficiently plentiful to cover immense portions of land, and some of the species are to be found in all parts of the world. The roots of the club-moss were supposed to bear some resemblance to a wolf's foot. Hence their scientific name of Lycopodium. The species called the Selago, or fir-club moss, which is like a very large moss, is not uncommon on our alpine bogs. once believed to be very efficacious in the cure of complaints of the eyes, and its name, which appears to be of Celtic origin, is made of "sel"-sight, and "jack"-salutary. Selma, the hall of Fingal, is said to have the same root, and to signify the same as the word bellevue, so often applied to modern villas. This plant is used in Sky instead of alum, to fix colours in dyeing, and it is still used in the Highlands as a medicine, but it is too powerful in its properties to be safely employed by the inexperienced. The Swedes use this infusion to destroy insects. Two other kinds, the Alpine club-moss and the species termed the interrupted clubmoss, both of which grow wild on the bogs of Great Britain, supply the Icelanders with a yellow dye. They boil their woollen cloths in a decoction of this plant, mixing it with the leaves of the whortleberry. This produces a good deep yellow colour, and a brown dye is obtained by substituting the bearberry for the whortleberry leaves. A large handsome species of club-moss grows upon some of the trees of Hindostan, where it hangs in great beauty, its tufts nearly a foot in length. These plants appear to have attained in the Pre Adamite earth a size so gigantic as to rival that of our forest trees, and the remains

of the species of club-moss are abundant in the coal measures. The powder of some of these mosses is inflammable, and is used in making fireworks; and woollen cloths boiled with some species of this plant becomes of a blue colour if afterwards passed through a decoction of Brazil wood.

More general in our country landscape than the club-mosses are the equisetums, or horse-tails, which are also classed with the ferns. These plants are commonly called jointed ferns, and leafless ferns, and the French term them préles. They are found in rivers and ditches, and some of them in meadows. Sometimes they are scattered like a crop all over a meadow land; sometimes, as at Camberwell, near London, they are frequent weeds in the garden; one kind is very common on Hampstead Heath. They are abundant not only in our own land but in almost every country both in and out of the tropics; but their resemblance to ferns is not so obvious as that the observer who is not a botanist would class them with that tribe. The name equisetum literally signifies horse-hair; and their long slender-jointed branchlets, whirled round their stem of several spears, render the name sufficiently expressive. Some of them are very troublesome weeds on deep loamy soils; and several are used for polishing hard materials, as ivory. The plant known in commerce as Dutch rushes is a species of the horse-tail; and from their uses in

polishing rough substances they have acquired the familiar name of shavegrasses. They were once used to clean pewter vessels, and the milkmaids of Norway still scour their pails with them. Their use in polishing is owing to the quantity of flint contained in their stems, which is so great that when the vegetable matter is burned away the horse-tail still preserves its form. These plants have been used as astringents, and one kind is used for tea. Haller mentions that the great water horse-tail served as food to the poorer people among the Romans. Several species are found to form tubercles on subterranean stems, like potatoes, which are nutritive and full of

starch, and it is thought probable that this might be the portion of the plant which was eaten. They were much recommended both by the ancients and the earlier herbalists for their virtues.

Dr. Drummond has observed an interesting fact in the horse-tail. "Each

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seed," he remarks, "has four (sometimes three or five) pellucid threads, clavate or club-shaped at their extremities, proceeding from it. These curl and twist about in a very curious manner, and move the seed along with them in various directions. If a spike of the equisetum, when ripe in spring, be shaken over a piece of white paper, the seeds will fall out in the form of a fine brown powder; and if they be damped a little, by gently breathing on them, and be then examined by a magnifier, they will be seen crawling about on the paper like so many spiders." The fossil equisetums show that these plants were in former ages large trees.

The pepperwort tribe, the quillwortз and pillworts, all creeping or floating, flowerless plants, bearing some affinities in their structures to the ferns, form an order of that class. They are little known to any but botanists, and are found in ditches and inundated places in various parts of the world. A. P.

THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE.

THERE was one very singular instance of outward conversion which occurred. One day some heathens, while walking around the dwelling-house, and carefully observing every part of it, espied a and were so enamoured of the shining lad cleaning the table-knives in a shed, blades, that they could not resist the temptation of appropriating some of them to their own use. Having, therefore, drawn off the attention of the youth, and, unnoticed by him, stolen four of these knives, they decamped in great haste to their canoe, and set sail for Savaii.

became too strong for their fragile bark; But on the voyage the wind and more alarmed by the voice of conscience than of the storm, which they deemed a punishment for robbing the missionary, they held a council, and resolved, as their only means of deliverance, to rid themselves of their ill-gotten tance, they treated the knives as the booty. Accordingly, but with much relucshipmen treated the prophet, and on the native teacher's house, confessed arriving at Savaii, proceeded direct to what they had done, and declared their desire henceforth to become " sons of the word."-Williams.

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THE SOCIABLE GROSBEAK.

THE Sociable grosbeak, or weaver bird, of Southern Africa, belongs to a sub-family of the Fringillida, and excels any of its feathered race in the extent, if not the workmanship, of its habitation. This is usually constructed on a large and lofty tree, often a species of mimosa or sensitive plant, which is selected because of its ample top, and strong, widespreading branches, forming a good support to the extensive erection which has to be made. Where, however, such trees are not to be found, the birds will even form them upon the leaves of the arbo

Proceus socius.-Loxia socia, of Latham; Tisserin republicain, of Daudin.

rescent aloe, (Aloe Arborescens,) as has been occasionally found towards the Orange River.

The situation being selected, the operation of building the general framework is commenced by the community at large, which will receive a common advantage by its completion. It is firmly interwoven with the branches of the tree on which it rests, and often a large part of a principal branch is included within its substance. This being accomplished, each pair proceeds to the construction of its own nest, which, like the roof, consists of grass, and this is used both for repair and enlargement. The whole forms a very complete protection, which

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