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A botanist ought not to complain of the antiquity of the edifices. The roofs and walls are covered with Canary house-leek and those elegant trichomanes, mentioned by every traveller. These plants are nourished by the abundant mists. Mr.
But he remarked that it was extraordinary in what odd places we sometimes do find plants; he knew a single plant of Asplenium Trichomanes which had no other within thirty miles of it; it was growing on a tombstone which had come from a long distance and from a Trichomanes country.
The rich woodland scenery, the green pastures with their large wild fences now laden with wild roses; the shady lanes, whose banks will soon be covered with the long, bright green fronds of the hartstongue, and the delicate drooping trichomanes; the fine timber, and the picturesque farmhouses with their thatched roofs nestling in the valleys all tend to give a home-like English air to the scenery of Normandy.
To bear out what has been said in the text concerning the abundance of ferns at Owl's Head, I subjoin a list of the species observed; premising that the first interest of my trip was not botanical, and that I explored but a very small section of the woods: Polypodium vulgare. Adiantum pedatum. Pteris aquilina. Asplenium Trichomanes. A. thelypteroides. A. Filix-foemina. Phegopteris polypodioides.
Woody trailers, harsh hard grass in tufts, the Asplenium trichomanes in rifts, the Pellea ternifolia in sand, and some ohia and mamane scrub in hollow places sheltered from the wind, all hard, crisp, unlovely growths, contrast with the lavish greenery below.
And lower down the great forest trees arch over it, and the sunbeams trickle through them, and dance in many a quiet pool, turning the far-down sands to gold, brightening majestic tree-ferns, and shining on the fragile polypodium tamariscinum which clings tremblingly to the branches of the graceful waringhan, on a beautiful lygodium which adorns the uncouth trunk of an artocarpus, on glossy ginger-worts and trailing yams, on climbers and epiphytes, and on gigantic lianas which, climbing to the tops of the tallest trees, descend in vast festoons, many of them with orange and scarlet flowers and fruitage, passing from tree to tree, and interlacing the forest with a living network, while selaginellas and lindsayas, and film ferns, and trichomanes radicans drape the rocks in feathery green, along with mosses scarcely distinguishable from ferns.
Miss Piper was seen advancing on the same walk, and Violet was uncomfortable, dreading to see her treated as an inferior; but to her great satisfaction, Arthur addressed the little lady in his cordial manner, and Theodora congratulated her on being out of doors on this fine evening. 'Mrs. Nesbit wished me to ask Mr. Harrison for a frond of the new Trichomanes, said Miss Piper.
We have also some of the English species; among them I believe the Hymenophyllum Tunbridgense, with many of the same tribe. I see a little fern which, to my eyes, is our English Asplenium Trichomanes. Every English fern which I know has a variety something like it here, though seldom identical.
The walls are broken and highly fantastic, narrowing here, receding there, their strangely-arched recesses festooned with the feathery trichomanes, their clustering columns and broken buttresses suggesting some old-world minster, and their stately tiers of columnar basalt rising one above another in barren grey into the far-off blue sky.
One evening she sat studying ferns, and heroically saying over and over, "Andiantum, Aspidium, and Asplenium, Trichomanes," while longing to go and talk delightfully to David, who sat musing by the fire. "I can't go on so much longer," she thought despairingly.
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