oors.

The two Beech-ferns, the long and the broad, you may grow on the knoll;
give the long the dampest spots, and place the broad where it is quite
dry. As the rootstocks of both these are somewhat frail, I would advise
you to peg them down with hairpins and cover well with earth. By the
way, I always use wire hairpins to hold down creeping rootstocks of
every kind; it keeps them from springing up and drying before the
rootlets have a chance to grasp the soil.

The roots of Maidenhair should always be treated in this way, as they
dry out very quickly. This most distinctive of our New England ferns
will grow between the rocks of your knoll, as well as in deep nooks in
the fence. It seems to love rich side-hill woods and craves a rock
behind its back, and if you are only careful about the soil, you can
have miniature forests of it with little trouble. As for maidenhair, all
its uses are beauty!

Give me a bouquet of perfect wild rosebuds within a deep fringe of
maidenhair to set in a crystal jar where I may watch the deep pink
petals unfold and show the golden stars within; let me breathe their
first breath of perfume, and you may keep all the greenhouse orchids
that are grown.

Though you can have a variety of ferns in other locations, those that
will thrive best on the knoll and keep it ever green and in touch with
laurel and hemlock, are but five,--the Christmas fern, the Marginal
Shield-fern, the common Rock Polypody, the Ebony Spleenwort, and the
Spinulose Wood-fern. Of the first pair it is impossible to have too
many. The Christmas fern, with its glistening leaves of holly green, has
a stout, creeping rootstock, which must be firmly secured, a few stones
being added temporarily to the hairpins to give weight. The Evergreen
Wood-fern and Ebony Spleenwort, having short rootstocks, can be tucked
into sufficiently deep holes between rocks or in the hollows left by
small decayed stumps, while the transplanting of the Rock Polypody is an
act where luck, recklessness, and a pinch of magic must all be combined.

You will find vast mats of these leathery little Polypodys growing with
rock-selaginella on the great boulders of the river woods. As these are
to be split up for masonry, the experiment of transferring the polypody
is no sin, though it savours somewhat of the process of skin-grafting.
Evan and I have tried the experiment successfully, so that it is no
fable. We had a bit of shady bank at home that proved by