warmer regions is less great, but tbeir influence on the
aspect of vegetation there is of a different character ; they
are more frequently parasitic in the tropics, and by their
varied forms and colours, and the way in which they fix
themselves, they give an air of peculiar luxuriance to the
liigher vegetation. Even in the temperate regions some of
these herbaceous Eerns attain considerable height, as is the
case with the common Bracken, which, in the hedge-rows of
sheltered rural lanes in the south of England, reaches the
height of eight or ten feet, and assumes the most graceful
habit that can be conceived.
Wherever the Eerns occur, whether it be the herbaceous
species of temperate climates, or the arborescent species of
the equatorial regions, or'the epiphytal species which clothe
the trunks and branches of the trees in tropical forests, they
add a marked and peculiar character of beauty and luxuriance
to the scenery, and that to an extent which is not
realized by any other race of plants.
THE USES OP EERNS.
We cannot make out a long catalogue of the uses of Eerns.
Indeed, compared with their numbers and size, their usefulness
to man is very limited; and the frigid utilitarian might
be almost tempted to ask of Nature, wherefore she gave
them birth. Her reply would, however, stay further interrogation
; “ They are given
‘ To minister delight to man,
To beautify the earth.’ ”
The Eerns are not, moreover, altogether without their u se ;
for to the aborigines of various countries they furnish a
rude means of subsistence. The pith of the stem or
rhizome is the part usually employed for food, and this on
account of the starch deposited in its tissue. Among the
species which are thus employed as food—chiefly, however,
where civilization has not become the dispenser of better
fare— there is the Cyatliea meiullans, Marattia alata and
elegans, Angiopteris evecta-, the Tasmanian Tara, Pteris
esculenta; Nephrodiim esculentum, Biplazium esculentim,
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