ked precisely the same to him, or even more yellow, if it had
bloomed in a tin can!

We do not treat our native ferns with sufficient respect. Homage is paid
in literature to the palm, and it is an emblem of honour, but our New
England ferns, many of them equally majestic, are tossed into heaps for
hay and mown down by the ruthless scythe of the farmer every autumn when
he shows his greatest agricultural energy by stripping the waysides of
their beauty prior to the coming of the roadmender with his awful
"turn-piking" process. If, by the way, the automobilists succeed in
stopping this piking practice, we will print a nice little prayer for
them and send it to Saint Peter, so that, though it won't help them in
this world,--that would be dangerous,--it will by and by!

In the woods the farmer allows the ferns to stand, for are they not one
of the usual attributes of a picnic? Stuck in the horses' bridle, they
keep off flies; they serve to deck the tablecloth upon which the food is
spread; gathered in armfuls, they somewhat ease the contact of the
rheumatic with the rocks, upon which they must often sit on such
occasions. They provide the young folks with a motive to seek something
further in the woods, and give the acquisitive ladies who "press things"
much loot to take home, and all without cost.

This may not be respectful treatment, but it is not martyrdom; the fern
is a generous plant, a thing of wiry root-stock and prehistoric
tenacity; it has not forgotten that tree ferns are among its ancestors;
when it is discouraged, it rests and grows again. But imagine the
feelings of a mat of exquisite maidenhair rent from a shady slope with
moss and partridge vine at its feet, and quivering elusive woodland
shade above, on finding itself unceremoniously crowded into a bed,
between cannas or red geraniums! Or fancy the despair of either of the
wide-spreading Osmundas, lovers of stream borders opulent with
leaf-mould, or wood hollows deep with moist richness, on finding
themselves ranged in a row about the porch of a summer cottage, each one
tied firmly to a stake like so many green parasols stuck in the dry loam
point downward!

It is not so much a question of how many species of native ferns can be
domesticated, for given sufficient time and patience all things are
possible, but how many varieties are either decorative, interesting, or
useful away from their native haunts. For any one taking what may be
called a botanical