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Fern   Listen
noun
Fern  n.  (Bot.) An order of cryptogamous plants, the Filices, which have their fructification on the back of the fronds or leaves. They are usually found in humid soil, sometimes grow epiphytically on trees, and in tropical climates often attain a gigantic size. Note: The plants are asexual, and bear clustered sporangia, containing minute spores, which germinate and form prothalli, on which are borne the true organs of reproduction. The brake or bracken, the maidenhair, and the polypody are all well known ferns.
Christmas fern. See under Christmas.
Climbing fern (Bot.), a delicate North American fern (Lygodium palmatum), which climbs several feet high over bushes, etc., and is much sought for purposes of decoration.
Fern owl. (Zool.)
(a)
The European goatsucker.
(b)
The short-eared owl. (Prov. Eng.) Fern shaw, a fern thicket. (Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fern" Quotes from Famous Books



... old home, and indeed often supplants the native species. As the Maoris say,—"As the white man's rat has driven away the native rat, so the European fly has driven away our fly, so the clover kills our fern, and so will the Maori himself ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes

... obtain 'a peep at nature, if they can no more.' Far removed from green fields and leafy woods, they may, for instance, enjoy their leisure mornings in watching one of the most beautiful phenomena of vegetable development—the evolution of the circinate fronds of the fern; a plant in every respect associated with elegance and beauty. This kind of gardening has, therefore, become of late years one of the most fashionable, while at the same time one of the most pleasant sources of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various

... house in which there was neither wholesome conversation nor privacy nor order. An ambition to live humanly and harmoniously in an apartment like this grew each moment in definiteness. She appreciated the delicacy of the centre-piece of maidenhair-fern, veiling with its cloud of green a few flame-like jonquils. She took a woman's joy in the immaculate napery and in the charm and variety of the china. Such housekeeping was an art, and quite impossible ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... will, let Bresal my brother have near him these things of which he is dreaming, as a remembrance of what his soul loveth." Then, turning to the tree and the plant and the pool, he blessed them and said: "O little tree and starry plant and cool well and transparent fern, and whatsoever else Bresal now sees, arise in the name of the Lord of the four winds and of earth and water and fire, arise and go and make real the dream that ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... in the valley lookin' for your drowned body the while! Women 'mazes me more the wiser I graw. Come this way, to the linhay. There's a sweet bed o' dry fern in the loft, and you must keep out o' sight till mother's told cunning. I'll hit upon a way to break it to her so soon as she's rose. An' if I caan't, Phoebe will. Come along quiet. An' I be gwaine to lock 'e in, Chris, if't is all the same to you. For why? Because you might fancy the van folks ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... fall loosely over the door, and the great day of the Sheep Eaters had passed. The silent night became more silent, the owl ceased calling to his mate, the coyote skulked into his lair, the birds ceased their chirping, the great forest trees seemed in a trance, not a flower or fern moved, ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen

... the pool, which, reflecting this massive and dusky barrier, appeared to partake of its colour. On the opposite side was a heathy hill, whose autumnal bloom had not yet faded from purple to russet; its surface was varied by the dark green furze and the fern, and in many places gray cliffs, or loose stones of the same colour, formed a contrast to the ruddy precipice to which they lay opposed. A natural road of beautiful sand was formed by a beach, which, extending all the way around the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... easily spend a good deal for curios, such as plaques, cups, vases, napkin-rings, plates and toothpicks of orange wood, bark pin-cushions, cat's-eye pins, etchings of all the missions in India ink, wild-flower, fern, and moss work, and, perhaps most popular of all, the pictures on orange wood of the burro, the poppy, and pepper and oranges. Or, if interested in natural history, you can secure a horned toad, a centipede, or a tarantula, alive or dead, ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... Nature sends a rare migrant creature of air, or earth, or water, in their way.” Go through our English lakes, as the writer did recently, after not having visited them for several years, and you will find, for instance, the falls of Lodore, where once the parsley-fern abounded, now entirely stript of it. Just as—to take a parallel case—in a certain stream in Borrowdale, where some years ago the writer caught so many trout that the widow, in whose cottage he lodged, offered to keep him any length of time gratis, so long as he would supply ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... me, thou darned owld liar that thou art!" said he, shaking his fist savagely at the fern-clad hill-side, where Hate presumably was watching ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... their skins in good order. As to their breakfast, I am afraid that often they have some very unpleasant things to eat—stale shark, for instance, and sour corn bread—so sour that you could not swallow it, and boiled fern root, or the pulp of fern stems, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... beech; the third, an aromatic evergreen of world-wide celebrity—the "Winter's-bark." [Note 2.] But there is also a growth of buried underwood, consisting of arbutus, barberry, fuchsias, flowering currants, and a singular fern, also occurring in the island of Juan Fernandez, and resembling the zamia ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... an hour, till we were in a denser forest than I had yet seen. Creepers innumerable hung down from the boughs, twisting round them, and forming a complete network in all directions; while huge fern-leaved plants covered the ground, waving gracefully above our heads. We were in a complete labyrinth of shrubs, plants, and creepers, out of which alone I could certainly never have extricated myself. "No fear, me find a way," said Chickango, "while sun ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... Otis had telegraphed for a waggonette to meet them, and they started on their drive in high spirits. It was a lovely July evening, and the air was delicate with the scent of the pine-woods. Now and then they heard a wood pigeon brooding over its own sweet voice, or saw, deep in the rustling fern, the burnished breast of the pheasant. Little squirrels peered at them from the beech-trees as they went by, and the rabbits scudded away through the brushwood and over the mossy knolls, with their white tails in the air. As they entered the ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... you see now once again The glen And fern, the highland, and the thistle? And do you still remember when We heard the bright-eyed woodcock whistle Down by the rippling, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... to the floor, Had a feeling just then that her pet "pash" Would be a nice car at the door, To motor all day without fagging— Not to drive nor to start up the thing. Oh! the joy to see someone else dragging A tow-rope or greasing a spring! Then a fifth murmured, "What about fishing? Fern and heather right up to your knees And a big salmon rushing and swishing 'Mid the smell of the red rowan trees." So the train of opinions drifted And thicker the atmosphere grew, Till piercing the voices uplifted Rang a sound I was sure I once knew. A ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... evening at Limoise, just before the inevitable hour for my departure, I went up alone to the large, old room on the second floor in which I slept. First I leaned out of the open window to watch the July sun sink behind the stony fields and fern heaths that lay towards the sea, which though very near us was invisible. These sunsets at the end of my Thursday holidays always overwhelmed me ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... until he came to a point where the narrow bridlepath branched off the road and wound upward into the silent woods. Following this path until it became indistinguishable on a thick carpet of moss and leaves and coarse fern, he reached the big boulder at last; there he left Keno safely tied and hidden in a clump of alders. Then he went on, several rods down the trail, and took up his position directly across ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... their canoe beneath a giant spruce, they followed where a little trail beckoned them on and up the mountain side. For hours they climbed, wending their way through lonely, silent woods, the twittering wren the only life they saw or heard. At times they lost the trail, as it was overgrown with fern and berry bush. But once the leading klootsmah stopped and signed to her companions to keep still. Halting, they waited while she pointed to the root fangs of a cedar tree, where well within the hollow butt a western ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... speaking for some moments. The deer, in lofty pity for Vick, have stopped to allow her to get nearer to them. With their fine noses in the air, and their proud necks compassionately turned toward her, they are waiting, while she pushes, panting and shrieking, through the stout fern-stems; then, leap cruelly away ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... Sat to sew, Just where a patch of fern did grow; There, as she yawned, And yawn wide did she, Floated some seed Down her gull-e-t; And look you once, And look you twice, Poor old Tillie Was gone in a trice. But oh, when the wind Do a-moaning come, 'Tis poor old Tillie Sick for home; And oh, when ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... shall ride through ranks sae rude, As through the moorland fern, Then ne'er let the gentle Norman blude Grow cauld ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... a more beautiful and instructive example of this play of molecular force than that furnished by water. You have seen the exquisite fern-like forms produced by the crystallization of a film of water on a cold window-pane.[15] You have also probably noticed the beautiful rosettes tied together by the crystallizing force during the descent of a snow-shower ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... defile of Gondo, I find "Viola (saxatilis?) name yet wanted;—in the most delicate studding of its round leaves, like a small fern more than violet, and bright sparkle of small flowers in the dark dripping hollows. Assuredly delights in shade ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... paces distant, standing amidst the long and rank fern that grew on either side of their path, quite motionless, and looking on the pair with a sarcastic smile, stood the ominous stranger, whom the second chapter of our first volume introduced to ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... crutch! is it not autumn, when the fern is red, the water-flag yellow? Have I not hated ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... prettiest thing I ever saw. You know Bonner bought her as a four-year-old—the same Bonner that owned the 'New York Ledger.' I used to read the 'Ledger' clear through, when Henry Ward Beecher and Fanny Fern wrote for it. None of these new magazines touch it. And you knew Tom Hendricks? That's a good picture. Tom looked like a statesman anyhow, and that's more ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... Dogwood, Durability Dragon Plant, Snare Dragonwort, Horror Dried Flax, Usefulness Ebony, Blackness Echites, Be Warned in Time Elder, Zeal Elm, Dignity Endive, Frugality Escholzia, Do Not Refuse Me Eupatorium, Delay Evergreen Thorn, Solace Fern, Flowering, Magic Fern, Sincerity Fever Root, Delay Fig, Argument Fig Marigold, Idleness Fig Tree, Prolific Filbert, Reconciliation Fir, Time Fir, Birch, Elevation Flax, I Feel Your Kindness Fleur-de-lis, I burn Fleur-de-Luce, Fire Fly Orchis, Error Flytrap, Deceit Fools Parsley, Silliness Forget-me-not, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... creeping, round-leaved houstonia was here, with a superfluity of a weedy blue sage (Salvia lyrata). Here, also, as in Daytona, I found a strikingly handsome tufted plant, a highly varnished evergreen, which I persisted in taking for a fern—the sterile fronds—in spite of repeated failures to find it described by Dr. Chapman under that head, until at last an excellent woman came to my help with the information that it was "coontie" (Zamia integrifolia), famous as a plant out of ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... calculation, the lack of sentiment displayed in wooing, I think Puritan husbands and wives were happy in their marriages, though their love was shy, almost sombre, and "flowered out of sight like the fern." A few love-letters still remain to prove their affection: letters of sweethearts and letters of married lovers, such as Governor Winthrop and his wife Margaret; letters like the words of another Margaret—a queen—to her "alderliefest;" ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... And then you would turn over all the little things of old, and wrangle a bit over details here and there; and all the while you would be the very selfsame two that were young and were lost in the wood and trampled down the fern and saw the squirrels overhead all those long ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... him, and the hunger of his face seemed to strike her suddenly. She got up from the fern-bed and said, "Yes, we will come. My troubles ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... sent gifts: some arrow-heads and a curiously fashioned vessel from the canon of the cave-dwellers; some chips from the petrified forest; a fern with wonderful fronds, root and all; and a sheaf of strange, beautiful blossoms carefully wrapped in wet paper, and all ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

... midst of which, covered with ivy and tufted plants, now ruddy with autumnal tints, stood the ruined walls of a little chapel. In the dilapidated vault close by lay buried many of his ancestors, and under the little wavy hillocks of fern and nettles, slept many an humble villager. He sat down upon a worn tombstone in this lowly ruin, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, he surrendered his spirit to the stormy and evil thoughts which he had invited. Long and motionless he sat there, while his foul fancies and ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... such a blue, blue sky, as she had never dreamt of: clear sharp purple hills rose up against it. There was a clear rippling little fountain, bursting out of a rock, carved with old, old carvings, broken now and defaced, but shadowed over by lovely maidenhair fern and trailing bindweed; and in a niche above a little roof, sheltering a figure of the Blessed Virgin. Some way off stood a long low house propped up against the rich yellow stone walls and pillars of another old, old building, and with a great chestnut-tree shadowing over ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... person she caught sight of there was her eldest son. He was dancing a quadrille, and his partner was a short young lady in a strawberry-coloured tulle dress, covered with trails of spinach-green fern leaves. This young person had a round, chubby face, with bright apple-hued cheeks, a dark, bullet-shaped head, and round, bead-like eyes that glanced about her rapidly like those of a frightened dickey-bird. Her dress was ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... beyond the cavern-mouth, the cry was repeated, and presently was heard a panting and 'plaining, a snuffling and a shuffling, and into the light of the fire hobbled the old Witch. Beholding Jocelyn sitting cross-legged on his couch of fern, she paused and, leaning on her crooked stick, viewed him with ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... fern-wove mattress lay No weary guest. St. Colum kneeled, And found no trace; but, ashen-grey, Far off he ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... at that which had taken the doctor's attention, for he was gazing into a side nook that suggested, from a dry heap of fern-like growth and grass, that it had lately ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping, carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile led into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and young oaks and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented brake-fern, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were hushed at the angry voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a long and anxious search, the carriage ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... after. I keep quantities of both remedies close at hand, for three or four venomous snakes have been killed within a dozen yards of the house, and little G—— is perpetually exploring the long grass all around or hunting for a stray cricket-ball or a pegtop in one of those beautiful fern-filled ditches whose tangle of creepers and plumy ferns is exactly the favorite haunt of snakes. As yet he has brought back from these forbidden raids nothing more than a few ticks and millions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... leaf. They lingered on the white blossoms of the various shrubs. They found the pink hawthorn; in the boughs of one of those trees one night in England in mid-May he had heard the nightingale, master singer of the non-human world. Up to him rose the enchanting hillside picture of grass and moss and fern. It was all like a sheet of soft organ music to his ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen

... has the beauty of moss agate in its liquid floor; the Red Grotto shows a warmer chord of color; and where there is no other charm to notice, endless beauty may be found in the play of sunlight upon roofs of limestone, tinted with yellow, orange, and pale pink, mossed over, hung with fern, and catching tones of blue or green from the still deeps beneath.... After a day upon the water it is pleasant to rest at sunset in the loggia above the sea. The Bay of Naples stretches far and wide in front, beautiful by reason ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting

... truant. Why, Dulcie found his own hat for him, and put it on his head to boot one day. He had deposited it on a stone, that he might the better look in the face a dripping rock, shaded with plumes of fern and tufts of grass, and formed into mosaic by tiny sprays of geranium faded into crimson and gold. It was a characteristic of Will that while he was so fanciful in his interpretation, the smallest, commonest text sufficed him. The strolls of these short autumn days were never barren ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... the observations made during his stay at Rio, when tropical nature was still a fresh and unexplored page to the young observer, are wonderful. Cabbage palms, liana creepers, luxuriant fern leaves—roads, bridges, and soil—planarian worms, frogs which climbed perpendicular sheets of glass, the light of fireflies, brilliant butterflies, fights between spiders and wasps, the victories of ants over difficulties, the habits of monkeys, the little Brazilian boys practising ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... this slight digression. The beautiful and purely local fern (Schizoea pusilla) growing in the pine barrens of New Jersey, affords quite as conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bible genesis of life as the phenomenal appearance of Japan clover in the South. It was at one time supposed that this ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... railway lines, the central one to the common way. The mouths of the beautiful tributary ravines are crossed either by graceful iron spans, which frame charming undercut glimpses of sparkling waterfalls and deep tangles of moss and fern, or by graceful stone arches draped with vines. There are terraced vineyards, after the fashion of the Rhineland, and the gentle arts of the florist and the truck-gardener are much in evidence. The winding river frequently sweeps at the base of rocky escarpments, but upon one side ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... tinkling waters slipt Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 190 Long, sparkling aisles of steel-stemmed trees Bending to counterfeit a breeze; Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew But silvery mosses that downward grew; Sometimes it was carved in sharp relief 195 With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear For the gladness of heaven to shine through, and here He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops And hung them thickly with diamond-drops, 200 That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, And made a star ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... black pattern on it. His face, yellow as wax, with closed eyes and bluish eyelids, was turned towards the ceiling, no breathing could be discerned: he seemed a corpse. At his feet knelt the Malay, also wrapt in a red shawl. He was holding in his left hand a branch of some unknown plant, like a fern, and bending slightly forward, was gazing fixedly at his master. A small torch fixed on the floor burnt with a greenish flame, and was the only light in the room. The flame did not flicker nor smoke. The Malay did not stir at Fabio's entry, he merely turned his eyes upon him, and again ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... no comment as they went on. Presently they came to a deep rift in the moor through which a stream leaped sparkling. The girl scrambled down, waist-deep in yellow fern, but the other side was steep and stony and she was glad of help when he held out his hand. They made the ascent with some difficulty and on reaching the summit she ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... to poke among the dense undergrowth of laurel, holly, and hazel that formed such a close cover for the game of various sorts with which the wood was so thickly populated. Now and then from her form amid the withered fern a frightened hare leaped among their very feet. Startled rabbits scurried here and there over the soft moss and rustling leaves. The cry of a night-bird from time to time broke the intense stillness of the lonesome place, while more than ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... upon a mossy seat, Where sings a fern-bound stream beneath her feet, And breathes the orange in the swooning air; Where in her queenly pride the rose blooms fair, And sweet geranium waves her scented hair; There, gazing in the bright face of the stream, Her thoughts swim onward ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... Ann S. Stephens, Maria Cummings, Anna Mowatt Ritchie, Rose Terry Cooke, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Augusta J. Evans, Catharine A. Warfield, and the writers under the assumed names of Fanny Forrester, Grace Greenwood, Fanny Fern, Marion Harland, and Mary Forrest, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... all and most fearsome, as the stems shot upwards and overtopped a child, the bracken became a forest through which she hardly dared to walk, so dense and interminable it was. To crawl up and down a fern-covered hillock needed all Helen's resolution and she would emerge panting and wild-eyed, blessing the open country and still watchful for what might follow her. After that experience a mere game of hunters, with John ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... already four or five feet high, stretching away below, into the cup of the camp or citadel. I did not dare to stand up, lest I should be seen. I burrowed my way among the ferns over the wall into the hollow, worming my way towards the edge of the fern clump so that I could see. In a minute, I was gazing through the fern-stems into the camp itself; it was ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... upon the fern in the window, missed the significance. It had registered his sincere regret—that fern—at the need of pawning Brian's fishing rods and golf clubs. Like Brian! He had failed utterly to comprehend ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... forest which bears more than a rough analogy with a coal-forest. The types may remain, but the details of their form, their relative proportions, their associates, are all altered. And the tree-fern forest of Tasmania, or New Zealand, gives one only a faint and remote image of the vegetation ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... of a Quantuck box cart; it requires still better seamanship to navigate one of them along the rutted roads. For some time, it took all of Dr. McAlister's energy to keep from landing himself and Allyn head foremost in the thickets of sweet fern and beach plum. By degrees, however, he became more expert in avoiding pitfalls and in keeping both wheels in the ruts, and he turned ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... morasses. The haunts of the snipe and the hern— (I shall question the two upper classes On aquatiles, when we return)— Why, I see on them absolute masses Of filix or fern. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... affirmative. It is well known that these Aborigines in no instance cultivate the soil, but subsist entirely by hunting and fishing, and on the wild roots they find in certain localities (especially the common fern), with occasionally a little wild honey; indigenous fruits being exceedingly rare. The whole race is divided into tribes, more or less numerous, according to circumstances, and designated from the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... thrive the most when the alimentary canal is kept loaded with indigestible or half-digested food, and that liquid foods are favorable to these pests, while solids tend to expel them. Freshly powdered areca nut, in teaspoonful doses, and the same quantity of a mixture of oil of male fern and olive oil, three parts oil and one part male fern oil, I find are both excellent vermifuges to give to matured dogs. Give a dose and two days after repeat, and this, I think, will ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell

... the path little animals came out of the fern to meet them; the very first that they met were ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... paces beyond the lych-gate—where the graves lie level with the coping, and the horseman can decipher their inscriptions in passing, at the risk of a twisted neck—the base of the churchyard wall is pierced with a low archway, festooned with toad-flax and fringed with the hart's-tongue fern. Within the archway bubbles a well, the water of which was once used for all baptisms in the parish, for no child sprinkled with it could ever be hanged with hemp. But this belief is discredited now, and the well ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Helen had not planned for the corncake at first—but there was the codfish. If the poor dear had had nothing but codfish! . . . Helen opened a jar of the treasured peach preserves, too; indeed, the entire supper table from the courageous little fern in the middle to the "company china" cup at Mrs. Raymond's plate was a remorseful apology for that midday codfish. If Mrs. Raymond noticed this, she gave no sign. Without comment, she ate the corncake and the peach preserves, and drank her tea from the china cup; with ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter

... it, and Basavriuk said, "You are just in time, Peter: to-morrow is St. John the Baptist's day. Only on this one night in the year does the fern blossom. I will await you at ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... European beech (Fagus sylvatica), and its weeping, purple-leaved, and fern-leaved varieties, are frequently met with in parks and may be told from the native species by its darker bark. The weeping form may, of course, be told readily by its drooping branches. The leaves of the European beeches are broader and less serrated than those ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... a window, too, looking out into the hotel courtyard with its fern-set fountains and mosaic pavement, and the young men would stand against this and sometimes even mutter. One day I heard one repeating in all urgent whisper as I passed "But you don't quite see, Mr. Ponderevo, the full ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... little pleasure. I miss the deer; and when the first park that one ever knew was Buxted, with its moving antlers above the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that the right place for cattle—even for Alderneys—is the meadow. Cows in a park are a poor ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... not sure whether two of them may not be the same, varied somewhat by soil and position. The third grows only in high situations, and is unknown upon the plains; it has leaves very minutely subdivided, and looks like a fern, but the blossom and seed are nearly identical with the other varieties. The peculiar property of the plant is, that, though highly nutritious both for sheep and cattle when eaten upon a tolerably full stomach, it is very fatal upon an empty one. Sheep and ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... after a clearing has been made. Nature lays down a green sward directly on the rich virgin mould, and sets to work besides to cover up the unsightly stems and holes of the fallen timber with luxuriant tufts of a species of hart's-tongue fern, which grows almost as freely as an orchid on decayed timber. I was so still and silent that innumerable forest birds came about me. A wood pigeon alighted on a branch close by, and sat preening her radiant plumage in a bath of golden sunlight. The profound stillness was stirred now and ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... the principal article of our commissariat. This was packed up in sacks, which were again enclosed in long pockets, made of hides, and called "parfleshes," the use of which is to defend the canvas of the sacking from being torn by branches of fern and underwood. The sacks we secured on strong pack-saddles, between which and the back of the horse were some thick soft cloths. All our baggage-horses were furnished with trail ropes, which were allowed to drag on the ground after the horse, for the purpose of enabling us to catch him ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... some fresh fuel. Next I fastened a large piece of birch bark on two split sticks behind the fireplace; then I sat down on an old log to wait. The rude reflector did very well as the fire burned up. Out in front the fern tops were dimly lighted to the edge of the clearing. As I watched, a dark form shot suddenly above the ferns and dropped back again. Three heavy thumps followed; then the form shot up and down once more. This time there was no mistake. In the firelight I saw plainly the dangle ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... features in the botany of Cape York, is the occurrence of a palm, not hitherto mentioned as Australian. It is the Caryota urens (found also in India and the Indian archipelago) one of the noblest of the family, combining the foliage of the tree-fern with a trunk a foot in diameter, and sixty in height. It is found in the dense brushes along with three other palms, Seaforthia, Corypha, and Calamus. Another very striking tree, not found elsewhere by us, is the fine Wormia alata, abundant on the margin ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... hay field in the month of September, 1793, when he was surprised to see a cat and a hare playing together in the hay. He stood more than ten minutes gratified at the unusual sight, when the hare, alarmed at seeing a stranger approach, ran into a thicket of fern, and was followed ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... dem wilden Land der Kaftern, Wo die Hottentotten trachten Holie Hottentottentitel Zu erwerben in den Schlachten, Wo die Hottentottentaktik Lasst ertonen fern und nah Auf dem Hottentottentamtam Hottentottentattratah; Wo die Hottentottentrotteln, Eh' sie stampfen stark und kuhn. Hottentottentatowirung An sioh selber erst vollzieh'n, Wo die Hottentotten tuten Auf dem Horn voll Eleganz Und nachher mit Grazie tanzen ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... mysterious paradises of inconceivable green freshness and supernaturally beautiful flowers, fairy fastnesses of fragrance and hidden castles of the dew. In such hours the Well at the World's End seems no mere poet's dream. It awaits us yonder in the forest glade, amid the brooding solitudes of silent fern, and the gate of the Earthly Paradise is surely there in yonder vale hidden ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... wind blew about him as he strolled through the darkening column, set thick with great bushes of sombre juniper among the yellowing fern, which stretched away on the left-hand side of the road leading to the Hall. He stood and watched the masses of restless discordant cloud which the sunset had left behind it, thinking the while of Mr. Grey, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... as a long circular perspective ending in a shining disk of quivering water at a distance of a hundred feet down. There was a lining of green moss near the top, and nearer still the hart's-tongue fern. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... than read his defence of the British Constitution, though I personally disagree with some points in his argument. One sentence from this passage might be addressed to our Allies very appropriately to-day—"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... bosom was reflected in the breast of Nature. Through deep green vistas where the boughs arched overhead, and showed the sunlight flashing in the beautiful perspective; through dewy fern from which the startled hares leaped up, and fled at his approach; by mantled pools, and fallen trees, and down in hollow places, rustling among last year's leaves whose scent woke memory of the past; the placid Pecksniff strolled. By meadow gates and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... Goldenrod; in the fields and meadows, we would see the Ox-eye Daisy, Black-eyed Susan, Wild Carrot, and the most beautiful fall flower of the northeastern United States, the Fringed Gentian; in the woods, Mountain Laurel, Pink Azalea, a number of wild Orchids, Maidenhair Fern, and Jack-in-the Pulpit; in the marshes, Pink Rose-mallow, which reminds us of the Hollyhocks of our Grandmother's garden, Pickerel-weed, Water-lily, and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... the waters of Puget Sound and the harbors of the southwest invite the small craft. Nearly 50,000 miles of scenic highway, passable for twelve months in succession, are ready for your automobiles. Game, both large and small, feathered and hoofed, will lure you through many a jungle of delicate fern and sweet scented bramble; while countless streams and lakes teem ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles

... sere, yellow skeletons of last summer's ferns, if haply winter have forgotten one green leaf for our home vase—in vain we rake, freezing our fingers through our fur gloves—there is not one. An icicle has pierced every heart; and there are no fern leaves except those miniature ones which each plant is holding in its heart, to be sent up in next summer's hour of joy. But here are mosses—tufts of all sorts; the white, crisp and crumbling, fair as winter frostwork; ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a cotton-tail. A snake slid, hissing, out of sight under a jungle of fern. A butterfly, dull brown and ocher, settled upon a branch in the sunlight, where it began slowly ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... saluted as the owners of such steeds approached. Leaving the stable, they passed through an archway into the famous gardens, which were said to be the most beautiful in all the East. Beautiful they were indeed, planted with trees, shrubs, and flowers such as are seldom seen, while between fern-clad rocks flowed rills which fell over deep cliffs in waterfalls of foam. In places the shade of cedars lay so dense that the brightness of day was changed to twilight, but in others the ground was open and carpeted with flowers which filled the air with perfume. Everywhere ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... astonishing journeys about that fag end of the universe in the pursuit of knowledge. We read of his walking thirty-two miles in a soaking rain to the top of a mountain, and bringing home only a plant of white heather. On another day he walked thirty-six miles to find a peculiar kind of fern. Again he walked for twenty-four hours in hail, rain, and wind, reaching home at three o'clock in the morning. But at seven he was up and ready for work as usual. He carried heavy loads, too, when he went searching for minerals and fossils. ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... more increased to the benefit of the merchant. The poorest also will have glass if they may; but, sith the Venetian is somewhat too dear for them, they content themselves with such as are made at home of fern and burned stone; but in fine all go one way—that is, to shards at the last, so that our great expenses in glasses (beside that they breed much strife toward such as have the charge of them) are worst of all bestowed in mine opinion, because their pieces ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... went on, "I'd like to see this guy Elliott. Anybody who would draw a picture like that. Hold your horses, Mike, here's another. 'The Faun." What's a faun, Mike? I guess he means fern. It looks like ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... root, and hung a noiseless green shower over the basin of green it shadowed. Beneath it the interminable growl sounded pleasantly; softly shot the sparkle of the twisting water, and you might dream things half-fulfilled. Knots of fern were about, but the tops of the mounds were firm grass, evidently well rolled, and with an eye to airy feet. Olympus one eminence was called, Parnassus the other. Olympus a little overlooked Parnassus, but Parnassus was broader and altogether better adapted for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... fall leaves, pressed, make pretty draperies for these kinds of vases. Sprays of mixed leaves, oak leaves and acorns, small maple leaves, the holly leaf and berry, mixed ivy and fern leaves, and many other kinds of leaves and vines ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... upon the sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk. Fire-flies hung in bright clusters on the dewy leaves, that waved in the cool night-wind; and the flowers stood gazing, in very wonder, at the little Elves, who lay among the fern-leaves, swung in the vine-boughs, sailed on the lake in lily cups, or danced on the mossy ground, to the music of the hare-bells, who rung out their merriest peal in honor ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott

... conventional path, not in a hundred years. Therefore I am forced to leave their part of the telling to Fancy, and you may believe or discredit as much or as little as you choose; only I am hoping that by this time you have acquired at least a sprinkling of fern-seed in your eyes. You may have forgotten that fern-seed is the most subtle of eye-openers known to Fancy; and that it enables you to see the things that have existed only in your imagination. It ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... asked a Maidenhair Fern, who from her position could get not even a glimpse of the ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer

... lost its way Amid the grass and fern; A passing stranger scooped a well, Where weary men might turn; He walled it in and hung with care A ladle at the brink; He thought not of the deed he did, But judged that all might drink. He passed again, and lo! the well, By summer ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... rugged, leaving, in the interspaces, very large valleys, and gently-rising grounds about their sides. These hills, though of a rocky disposition, are, in general, covered, almost to their tops, with trees; but the lower parts, on the sides, frequently only with fern. At the bottom of the harbour, where we lay, the ground rises gently to the foot of the hills, which run across nearly in the middle of the island; but its flat border, on each side, at a very small distance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... crows lonesomely at morn— Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides— Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn Creep to their strawy sheds with ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... travellers came at last to a little Retem bush only a few feet high, and flung themselves down and tried to hide, at least, their heads, from those 'sunbeams like swords,' even beneath its ragged shade. And my text tells of a great rock, with blue dimness in its shadow, with haply a fern or two in the moist places of its crevices, where there is rest, and a man can lie down and be cool, while all outside is burning sun, and burning sand, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Illustrations Preface Introduction Key to Genera Classification of Ferns The Polypodies The Bracken Group: Bracken Cliff Brakes Rock Brake The Lip Ferns (Cheilanthes) The Cloak Fern (Notholaena) The Chain Ferns The Spleenworts: The Rock Spleenworts. Asplenium The Large Spleenworts. Athyrium Hart's Tongue and Walking Leaf The Shield Ferns: Christmas and Holly Fern Marsh Fern Tribe The Beech Ferns The Fragrant Fern The Wood Ferns The Bladder Ferns The Woodsias The Boulder ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... substance and softness, and have nothing to give in scent or nourishment; or become flinty or spiny; finally, which have lost simplicity, and become cloven or jagged. Many of these losses are partly atoned for by gain of some peculiar loveliness. Grass and moss, and parsley and fern, have each their own delightfulness; yet they are all of inferior power and honour, compared ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... a briered rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green holly copse where lurked the woodcock, and arcades of zigzag oak, Frida kept her bridal robe from spot, or rent, or blemish. Passing all these little pleadings of the life she had always loved, ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore

... beneath the hueless sky. They do not stay for question, do not hear Any old human speech: their tongue and ear Seem only thought, for when I spoke they stirred not And their bright minds conversing my ear heard not. —Until I slept or, musing, on a heap Of warm crisp fern lay between sense and sleep Drowsy, still clinging to a strand of thought Spider-like frail and all unconscious wrought. For thinking of that unforgettable thing, The war, that spreads a loud and shaggy wing On things most peaceful, simple, ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... from the valley,— From the valley!" Once he caught her, Swerving down a sidelong alley, For a moment, by the hand. "Tell me, tell me," he besought her, "Sweetest, I would understand Why so cold thy palm, that slips From me like the shy cold minnow? The wood is warm, and smells of fern, And below the meadows burn. Hard to catch and hard to win, oh! Why are those brown finger tips Crinkled as ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... entrance of an immense cavern formed in the lava. It was some hundred feet square, and from fifteen to twenty high. When lighted up by the torches, it had a very wild and picturesque appearance. The horses were tethered in one part, while we all went out and collected grass and fern leaves for our beds, and a good supply of fuel for our fire. Having cooked our supper, we sat round the fire, while one of the natives, who spoke English very well, told us some of the wonderful tales about Pele, the goddess of the burning ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... pleasure almost too openly. They chatted lightly on many subjects as they walked together, knee-deep, at times, among scarlet wine-berries, and the delicate green and ebony of maidenhair fern. The scents and essence of summer hung heavy in the air. Shafts of golden sunlight, piercing the somber canopy of the forest isles, touched, and, it seemed to Geoffrey, etherealized, his companion. The completeness of his enjoyment troubled the man, and presently he lapsed ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... Alderman is so obliging as to remind me that he has had 'the distinguished honor'—he is very good—of meeting me at the house of our mutual friend Deedles, the banker, and he does me the favor to inquire whether it will be agreeable to me to have Will Fern put down. He came up to London, it seems, to look for employment (trying to better himself—that's his story), and being found at night asleep in a shed, was taken into custody, and carried next morning ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... Lost in delightful talk, We rested from our walk. Beyond the shadow, large and staid, Cows chewed with drowsy eye Their cud complacently: Elegant deer walked o'er the glade, Or stood with wide bright eyes Gazing a short surprise; And up the fern ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... or Primary Epoch, constitutes the Age of Fishes and Fern Forests, and is made up of the Devonian, Coal, ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott

... its days an exquisite and brooding tenderness no words can render, as elusive as that half- defined outline on budding twigs against the sky—not leaves, but the shadow and promise of leaves to be. The turf of the high pasture-lands springing under the foot; the smell of sweet fern and brake; the tinkle of cow-bells among the rocks, or the soft patter of feet as the sheep run toward the open bars—what New England boy or girl does not remember and love, till loving and remembering are over for ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... Among the minor valleys Birmal perhaps takes precedence by right of its natural beauty. Here are stretches of park-like scenery where grass-covered slopes are dotted with clumps of deodar and pine and intersected with rivulets hidden in banks of fern; soft green glades open out to view from every turn in the folds of the hills, and above them the silent watch towers of Pirghal and Shuidar ... look down from their snow-clad heights across the Afghan uplands to the hills beyond Ghazni." (Holdich's ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished. From Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the Malay Peninsula, the same holds true. And where some area appears not under cultivation, the climbing fern and a coarse, useless "lalang" grass covers every inch of ground. One can hardly imagine a more complete blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited region. And ever-extending roads for the increasing motor cars are widening the cleared ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... Down on Fern Avenue, which is a wide, grassy road and no avenue at all, Uncle Roger Allan is carefully painting his chicken coops. Roger Allan is a tall, twinkling, smooth-shaven old man, and he lives in a house as twinkling and as tidy as himself. He is ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... ploughing in the rich vale watered by the upper streams of the Tirso, which winds through the valley at the foot of the Goceano range. After crossing the holms, we were on slopes of greensward, lightly feathered with the red fern, and dotted with trees, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... whether it is practised by Buddhist, or monk, or Protestant. First be partaker of the new life, and then put off the old man with his deeds. The withered fronds of last year are pushed off the fern by the new ones as they uncurl. That doctrine of life in Christ is set down as mystical; but it is mysticism of the wholesome sort, which is intensely practical, and comes down to the level of the lowest duties,—for ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Olly ran on, pushing their way through the great tall fern, or scampering over the short green grass where the little mountain sheep were nibbling, and where a beautiful creeping moss grew all over the ground, which, mother told Milly, was called "Stags' horn moss," because its little green branches ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... steep rise of the way, young hickories and oaks lent their aid to her hand that was free. Mosses and lichens, brown and black with the summer's heat, clothed the rocks and dressed out their barrenness; green tufts of fern nodded in many a nook, and kept their greenness still; and huckleberry bushes were on every hand, in every spare place, and standing full of the unreaped black and blue harvest. And in the very ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... was undulating and fertile, presented many features of beauty; beyond it, all was sterile, bleak, and barren. Long tracts of brown heath-clad mountain or not less unprofitable valleys of tall and waving fern were all that the eye could discern, except where the broad Shannon, expanding into a tranquil and glassy lake, lay still and motionless beneath the dark mountains, a few islands, with some ruined churches and a round tower, alone breaking ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... of lavender. The feeling was so new to them and so pleasant, that for a while they lay in luxurious ease, gazing out upon so much of the world as could be seen beyond the window—a green hillside scattered with gorse-bushes, sheeted with yellowing brake-fern and crossed by drifting veils of mist: all golden in the young sunshine, and all framed in a tangle of white-flowered solanum that clambered around the open casement. Arthur Miles lay and drank in the mere beauty of it. ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... frail Decaying children dread decay. Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale, And lessens in the morning ray: Look, how, by mountain rivulet, It lingers as it upward creeps, And clings to fern and copsewood set Along the green and dewy steeps: Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings To precipices fringed with grass, Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings, And bowers of fragrant sassafras. Yet all in vain—it passes still From hold to hold, it cannot stay, And in the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... below the spring where the maidenhair fern grew thick and spread out wide, perfect fronds on slender brown stems, shading fairy bowers; and where taller ferns grew high and leaned over like a delicate fairy forest; and where the wild violets grew so ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... latter part of July when Margaret returned home. The forest trees were all one dark, full, dusky green; the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams; the weather was sultry and broodingly still. Margaret used to tramp along by her father's side, crushing down the fern with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her light foot, and send up the fragrance peculiar ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... the even line of the horizon, and, in the valleys, thickets or belts of bloodwood are seen. In these hollows one may hope to find feed for the camels, for here may grow a few quondongs, acacia, and fern-tree shrubs, and in rare cases some herbage. The beefwood tree, the leaves of which camels, when hard pressed, will eat, alone commands the summit of the undulations. As for animal life—well, one forgets that life exists, until occasionally reminded of the ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... front and by the sound of various cascades, by which the winding stream is agreeably broken. Opposite to this seat the ground rises again in an easy concave to a kind of dripping fountain, where a small rill trickles down a rude niche of rock work through fern, liverwort, and aquatic weeds. . . The whole scene is opaque ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... head cocked from side to side. "No," said Eleanor, "I have no camp crumbs: you go back." The little red crested cross bill twittered in front of her from spray to spray of the purple fire weed and fern fronds; then, concluded that she was only a part of this out door world, anyway, and went back about his business on the trail behind. Two or three times, there was a vague rustle in the leaves that she couldn't localize—water ouzel in moss covert, or ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... away," I said, "for the next carriage will not only stop, but come over;" and Bessie suffered herself to be led through the little tangle of brier and fern, past the gray old gravestones with "Miss Faith" and "Miss Mehitable" carved upon them, and into the leafy shadow of the ...
— On the Church Steps • Sarah C. Hallowell

... intercommuning of foreigners, surcharges of commoners, trespasses in the fence month and winter haining, and in the enclosures; keeping hogs, sheep, goats, and geese, being uncommonable animals, in the Forest; cutting and burning the nether vert, furze, and fern; gathering and taking away the crabs, acorns, and mast; and other purprestures and offences; carrying away such timber trees as were covertly cut down in the night time; by which practices several hundred fine oaks were ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... Softly, dear, Let me breathe it in your ear— They are you, and only you. And those other nameless two Walking in Arcadian air— She that was so very fair? She that had the twilight hair?— They were you, dear, only you. If I speak of night or day, Grace of fern or bloom of grape, Hanging cloud or fountain spray, Gem or star or glistening dew, Or of mythologic shape, Psyche, Pyrrha, Daphne, say— I mean you, dear, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... task was to try to comply with the request of the National Suffrage Association to secure 100,000 names to a nation-wide petition to be presented to Congress for a Federal Suffrage Amendment. Mrs. Fern Richardson Rowe, Grand Rapids, was chairman of the work, which took up the greater part of the year 1909 and went over into 1910. This last year the State association obtained the consent of the Hon. Levi L. Barbour, former U. S. Senator Thomas W. Palmer ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... its thicker grass borders—where bright fall flowers raised their proud little heads; the old fence, broken down in places, where bushes burst through and half filled the gap; bright hips on the wild rosebushes, tufts of yellow fern leaves, brilliant handfuls of red and yellow which here a maple and there a pepperidge held out over the road; the bushy, bosquey, look which the uncut undergrowth gave the wood on either hand; the gleams of soft ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... exhortation of my frugal Dame,— Motley accoutrement, of power to smile At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and, in truth, More ragged than need was! O'er pathless rocks, Through beds of matted fern and tangled thickets, 15 Forcing my way, I came to one dear nook Unvisited, where not a broken bough Drooped with its withered leaves, ungracious sign Of devastation; but the hazels rose Tall and erect, with tempting clusters hung, 20 A virgin scene! A little while I stood, Breathing ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... ago, it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand, of a doctor "who was arrived at the knowledge of the 'Green and Red Dragon,' and had discovered the female fern-seed." Nobody ever knew what this meant; but the "Green and Red Dragon" so amused the people, that the doctor lived very comfortably upon them. About the same time there was pasted a very hard word upon every corner of the streets. This, to the best ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... Sweet-fern and moss in many a glade are here. Where, strewn in flocks, what cheek-flushed myriads lie Dimpling in dream—unconscious slumberers mere, While billows ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... perfectly straight, Guapo would have bound it to a post and made it so; but it happened to come quite right without further trouble. The tube of the lesser one was now cleaned out thoroughly, and polished by a little bunch of the roots of a tree-fern, until it was as smooth and hard as ebony. A mouthpiece of wood was placed at the smaller end of the table, and a sight was glued on the outside. This "sight" was the tooth of an animal,—one of the long curving incisors of a rodent animal called the "paca," ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... retort. "I meant that you were exhausting the possibilities of the language. Before long you'll have to be calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your 'Oh' was a mistake. You should have started with 'Red.' Then you could have had Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern—and, and all the ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... living on what is now the poor farm. The Saugus Female Seminary once held quite a place in literary circles, Cornelius C. Felton, afterward president of Harvard College, being its "chore boy" (the remains of his parents lie in the cemetery near by). Fanny Fern, the sister of N.P. Willis, the wife of James Parton, the celebrated biographer, as well as two sisters of Dr. Alexander Vinton, pursued their studies here, together with Miss Flint, who married Honorable Daniel P. King, member of Congress ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various

... their flight To neighb'ring woods, and trust themselves to night. The speedy horse all passages belay, And spur their smoking steeds to cross their way, And watch each entrance of the winding wood. Black was the forest: thick with beech it stood, Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn; Few paths of human feet, or tracks of beasts, were worn. The darkness of the shades, his heavy prey, And fear, misled the younger from his way. But Nisus hit the turns with happier haste, And, thoughtless of his friend, the forest pass'd, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... lower country he found covered with almost impenetrable thickets of small pine, with which is mixed a species of plant resembling arrow-wood, twelve or fifteen feet high, with thorny stems, almost interwoven with each other, and scattered among the fern and fallen timber: there is also a red berry, somewhat like the Solomon's seal, which is called by the natives solme, and used as an article of diet. This thick growth rendered travelling almost impossible, ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various

... the old pasture, which was overgrown with buckbushes and sassafras sprouts, which were turning into great pink and green fern clumps in the warm April sunshine, I gave the two or three Saint-Saens Delilah notes which had been robbed of any of their wicked Delilah flavor for me by having heard Mr. G. Bird sing them so beautifully on the stage of ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... flowers, which they diligently search for among the stumps and along the lake shore. I have begun collecting, and though the season is far advanced, my hortus siccus boasts of several elegant specimens of fern; the yellow Canadian violet, which blooms twice in the year, in the spring and fall, as the autumnal season is expressively termed; two sorts of Michaelmas daisies, as we call the shrubby asters, of which the varieties here are truly elegant; and a wreath of the ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... attempting fully to answer it I will say that the likeness of the primitive mind of the race to that surviving in the highly evolved individual is only partial. Like tendencies exist but the influence of a great body of knowledge above inevitably alters the action of the latter. Maidenhair fern stood indubitably in several instances for the pubic hair, once surrounding a cluster of trailing arbutus when talcum powder of that fragrance had been used on the body. I dreamed of Linnaea borealis, the little twin-flower, ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... a pathetic nobility which struck the keynote of her character, writes from Rockferry: "This morning of the New Year was very pleasant. It was almost as good as any day in winter in America. I went out with Mamma and Sweet Fern [Julian]. The snow is about half a foot deep. Julian is out, now, playing. I packed him up very warmly indeed. I wish I could go out in the new snow very much. Julian is making a hollow house of snow by the rhododendron-tree." What not to do we learned occasionally ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... not yet sodden with the later ones. The black, shaded loam, bare of grass, oozed the moisture it was saving for its evergreen redwoods against a rainless summer. In the dark clefts grew scentless things of a delicate, gnome aspect—gold-back fern, maiden-hair overlying dank, cold pools, sorrel, six-foot brake. No blossoms blew among all this greenery; only by that sign and by the wet, perspiring earth might one know that it was autumn ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... man—nay, I think your good opinion of him gives him new value in my eyes. That is always the way with us, my good friend! We may confess it, when there are none of these conceited male wretches among us. We will know what he really is—he shall not wear fern-seed, and walk among us invisible ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... place, Fern Hill, near Charmouth, in Dorsetshire, on the borders of Devon, and there she lived for some five years, a centre of beneficence in the district. She started a Sunday-school, and a Bible-class after a while for the lads too old for the school, who clamored for admission to her class ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... "Lend my cap, indeed! Why it wouldn't stay on the very tip of your ear, it's so small. As for nice, that depends. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. No, the only way for mortal people to be invisible is to gather the fern-seed and put it in ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... was too great. But there came a night, when, as we journeyed, we approached the town of Fierbois, a place very well known to me; and when we halted in a wood with the first light of day, and the wearied soldiers made themselves beds amid the dried fern and fallen leaves, I approached the Maid, who was gazing wistfully towards the tapering spire of a church, visible at some distance away, and I ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... leaves that had already fallen, saturated his spirit. The world, he thought, had never looked so beautiful. The forest was a riot of russet and gold. The hedge-rows were bronze and purple and saffron. The soft and misty sunlight only accentuated the amber tints that marked the dying fern. In the evening, unable to shake off the pensive mood into which the day had thrown him, he reached down Guthrie's Trial of a Saving Interest in Christ, and gave himself to serious thought. Was it in the pages of Guthrie's searching volume that he ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham

... of your readers want something odd and interesting in the way of plants let them try one of your Little Monarch Fern Balls. I have had rather hard luck with mine. I received the Fern Ball about a year ago, and every member of the family except myself condemned it at once as being "no good," but I kept it watered and in a few weeks it began to show signs of life and had several little fronds on it in April ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... into gold and fire in summer and in the autumn bow down with fruits; so long as water shall leap and foam and thunder in cataracts down the mountain-side, or ripple and smile over the pebble or under the fern—so long shall the heart of man respond to sun and moon and stars, to flower and tree and stream, and there shall ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... since disappeared. At that moment there seemed to rise before me, sporting among the gnarled branches of the old thorn-trees, the graceful form of Mary Stanley, followed by old Sergeant, bounding and barking through the fern; and the General looking on from a distance, pretending to be angry, and desiring her to come out of the covert and not disturb the game. Exactly thus, and there, I beheld them for the first time. What would I not give ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... green light. Oh! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook! Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he, The humble man, who, in his youthful years, Knew just so much of folly, as had made His early manhood more securely wise! Here he might lie on fern or withered heath, While from the singing lark (that sings unseen The minstrelsy that solitude loves best), And from the sun, and from the breezy air, Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame; And he, with many feelings, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons



Words linked to "Fern" :   cliff-brake, marginal wood fern, fiddlehead fern, Asplenium scolopendrium, fern ally, curly grass fern, northern oak fern, potato fern, brittle fern, spider fern, flower-cup fern, adder's fern, hard fern, Thelypteris simulata, golden fern, ferny, boulder fern, Dryopteris oreopteris, fan fern, Polypodium aureum, wood fern, wall fern, filmy fern, climbing fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, wood-fern, bird's nest fern, Florida strap fern, mountain fern, fiddlehead, goldie's wood fern, oleander fern, Marattia salicina, leatherleaf fern, lady fern, walking fern, fern genus, cliff brake, Vittaria lineata, christella, Parathelypteris simulata, staghorn fern, Diplopterygium longissimum, fern rhapis, Deparia acrostichoides, mosquito fern, American parsley fern, daisyleaf grape fern, Acrostichum aureum, Phlebodium aureum, king fern, Tectaria cicutaria, Venus'-hair fern, broad beech fern, toothed sword fern, Leptopteris superba, Dryopteris noveboracensis, soft tree fern, brittle maidenhair fern, davallia, Pityrogramma chrysophylla, licorice fern, cow-tongue fern, Rumohra adiantiformis, evergreen wood fern, Polybotria cervina, Virginia chain fern, Schaffneria nigripes, brittle bladder fern, Tectaria macrodonta, umbrella fern, glory fern, doodia, sensitive fern, crape fern, Solanopteris bifrons, California fern, Alabama lip fern, narrow beech fern, ball fern, hand fern, adder's tongue fern, ostrich fern, Anogramma leptophylla, Phyllitis scolopendrium, Parathelypteris novae-boracensis, hare's-foot fern, Nebraska fern, Gymnocarpium dryopteris, felt fern, Jersey fern, maidenhair fern, hart's-tongue, Pteris cretica, class Filicinae, Athyrium filix-femina, Oleandra mollis, spleenwort, climbing maidenhair fern, Prince-of-Wales plume, fern family, Central American strap fern, clover fern, southwestern lip fern, daisy-leaved grape fern, hay-scented fern, Killarney fern, Carolina pond fern, shuttlecock fern, curly grass, tree fern, seed fern, Coniogramme japonica, Scolopendrium nigripes, nonflowering plant, Goldie's fern, Asplenium ceterach, flowering fern, giant scrambling fern, grape fern, Cyrtomium aculeatum, lip fern, marsh fern, northern beech fern, Hartford fern, scale fern, Farley maidenhair fern, brake, scaly fern, rock brake, Ceterach officinarum, maidenhair, scented fern, western holly fern, Massachusetts fern, Microsorium punctatum, coffee fern, Indian button fern, Microgramma-piloselloides, dagger fern, bead fern, Pteridium esculentum, skeleton fork fern, water fern, Athyrium thelypteroides, tongue fern, serpent fern, Culcita dubia, Dennstaedtia punctilobula, black tree fern, shield fern, chain fern, Bermuda maidenhair fern, Prince-of-Wales feather, Pityrogramma calomelanos, Pteris multifida, prickly shield fern, Todea barbara, Polybotrya cervina, button fern, Onoclea sensibilis, deer fern, Canary Island hare's foot fern, hare's-foot bristle fern, whisk fern, basket fern, fragrant cliff fern, kidney fern, bird's-foot fern, osmund, crepe fern, five-fingered maidenhair fern, rattlesnake fern, limestone fern, Polystichum aculeatum, bristle fern, floating fern, New York fern, Onoclea struthiopteris, Goldie's shield fern, Drynaria rigidula, Diplazium pycnocarpon, squirrel's-foot fern, ribbon fern, northern holly fern, narrow-leaved spleenwort, smooth lip fern, pteridophyte, sword fern, fern palm, sweet fern, lipfern, woodsia, Asplenium nigripes, pecopteris, Filicopsida, annual fern, ditch fern, bulblet bladder fern, meadow fern, cinnamon fern, pasture brake, Thelypteris palustris, woodfern, mountain bladder fern, ten-day fern, Pellaea rotundifolia, Polystichum acrostichoides, grass fern, pine fern, winter fern, bear's-paw fern, bracken, Pteretis struthiopteris, mountain male fern, adder's tongue, hart's-tongue fern, resurrection fern, Thelypteris dryopteris, common staghorn fern, rasp fern, fragrant shield fern, lecanopteris, Polystichum adiantiformis, narrow-leaved strap fern, climbing bird's nest fern, broad buckler-fern



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