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 creeping root, but when it once takes hold, it flourishes mightily and after a year or so will wave silver-lined fronds three feet long proudly before you, a rival of Osmunda!

A sister spleenwort is the beautiful Lady fern, whose lacelike fronds have party-coloured stems, varying from straw through pink and reddish to brown, giving an unusual touch of life and warmth to one of the cool green fern tribe.  In autumn the entire leaf of this fern, in dying, oftentimes takes these same hues; it is decorative when growing and useful to blend with cut flowers.  It naturally prefers woods, but will settle down comfortably in the angle of a house or under a fence, and will be a standby in your wall rockery.

The ferns that seem really to prefer the open, one taking to dry and two to moist ground, are the hay-scented fern (Dicksonia punctilobula), the New York fern (Dryopteris Noveboracencis), and the Marsh Shield-fern.  Dicksonia has a pretty leaf of fretwork, and will grow three feet in length, though it is usually much shorter.  It is the fern universal here with us, it makes great swales running out from wood edges to pastures, and it rivals the bayberry in covering hillsides; it will grow in dense beds under tall laurels or rhododendrons, border your wild walk, or make a setting of cheerful light green to the stone wall; while if cut for house decoration, it keeps in condition for several days and almost rivals the Maidenhair as a combination with sweet peas or roses.

The New York fern, when of low stature, is one of the many bits of growing carpet of rich cool woods.  If it is grown in deep shade, the leaves become too long and spindling for beauty.  When in moist ground, quite in the open, or in reflected shade, the fresh young leaves of a foot and under add great variety to the grass and are a perfect setting for table decorations of small flowers.  We have these ferns all through the dell.  If they are mown down in June, July sees a fresh crop, and their spring green is held perpetual until frost.