of
shallow superficial roots, I can assure you.

A few years ago Evan, Timothy Saunders, and I went brake-hunting, I
selecting the groups and the menkind digging great solid turfs a foot or
more in depth, in order to be sure the things had native earth enough
along to mother them into comfortable growth. Proudly we loaded the big
box wagon, for we had taken so much black peat (as the soil happened to
be) that not a root hung below and success was certain.

When, on reaching home, in unloading, one turf fell from the cart and
crumbled into fragments, to my dismay I found that the long, tough
stalk ran quite through the clod and we had no roots at all, but that
(if inanimate things can laugh) they were all laughing at us back in the
meadow and probably another foot underground. Yet brakes are well worth
the trouble of deep digging, for if once established, a waste bit, where
little else will flourish, is given a graceful undergrowth that is able
to stand erect even though the breeze plays with the little forest as it
does with a field of grain. Then, too, the brake patch is a treasury to
be drawn from when arranging tall flowers like foxgloves, larkspurs,
hollyhocks, and others that have little foliage of their own.

The fact that the brake does not mature its seeds that lie under the
leaf margin until late summer also insures it a long season of
sightliness, and when ripeness finally draws nigh, it comes in a series
of beautiful mellow shades, varying from straw through deep gold to
russet, such as the beech tree chooses for its autumn cloak.

Another plant there is, a low-growing shrub, having long leaves with
scalloped edges, giving a spicy odour when crushed or after rain, that I
must beg you to plant with these brakes. It is called Sweet-fern, merely
by courtesy, from its fernlike appearance, for it is of the bayberry
family and first cousin to sweet gale and waxberry.

The digging of this also is a process quite as elusive as mining for
brakes; but when once it sets foot in your orchard, and it will enjoy
the drier places, you will have a liberal annex to your bed of sweet
odours, and it may worthily join lemon balm, mignonette, southernwood,
and lavender in the house, though in the garden it would be rather too
pushing a companion.

Next, both decorative and useful, comes the Silvery Spleenwort, that is
content with shade and good soil of any sort, so long as it is not rank
with manure. It has a slender creep