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company of Danes rushed in ; but they hurt him not, for
they knew he could do them service. During the day and
night did Osmund row backwards and forwards across the
river, ferrying troops of those fierce men; and when the
last company was put on shore,, you might have seen Osmund
kneeling beside the river’s bank, and returning heartfelt
thanks to heaven for the preservation of his wife and
child. Often in after years did Osmund speak of that day’s
peril; and his fair child, grown up to womanhood, called
the tall Eern by her father’s name.
O sm u n d a r e g a l is , Linnceus.— The Osmund Royal, or
E’lowering Eern. (Plate XIX. fig. 2.)
This plant has a very stately aspect, growing to the
average height of three or four feet, hut sometimes found
eight or ten feet high. It has what is called a tufted habit
of growth, and its stem by degrees acquires height, so that
in very old and luxuriant plants there is a trunk formed
of from a foot to two feet high. Erom the crown of this
trunk (whether that is seated close to the ground, or whether
it is elevated) grow the fronds, which are seldom less than
two feet high in very weak and starved plants; more usually
from three to four feet, and forming a mass of a couple of
yards across; or sometimes, as upon the margins of the
Irish lakes, eight, ten, or twelve feet high, noble and
majestic almost beyond conception. In the lovely lake
scenery of Killarney this plant is very prominent ; and we
need not be surprised at the rapturous descriptions which
have been given of its arching fronds, dipping in the crystal
lakes, and sheltering, with its broad green pinnæ, the numerous
aquatic birds which seek its canopy from the prying
eyes of pleasure-hunting tourists. When young the fronds
have generally a reddish stipes, and a glaucous surface,
which at a later period becomes lost. These fronds are
annual, growing up in spring, and perisldng in the autumn,
d’he form of the mature fronds is lanceolate ; they are bipinnate,
the pinnæ lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate, with pinnules
of an oblong-ovate form, somewhat auricled at the
base especially on the posterior side, bluntish at the apex,
and saw-edged along the margin. Some fronds are entirely
barren, and these differ from the fertile ones only in
having the leafy pinnules continued all the way to the apex,
instead of having the apex contracted, and bearing the
spore-cases. It is not always, however, that the spore-
cases when present are produced at the apex of the frond ;
abnormal developments are not uncommon, and in these
cases any portion of the pinnules may be seen converted
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