He is met with the rejoinder:
"Nay, I think rather you are more beholden to the night than to fern-seed, for your walking invisible."
One of Ben Jonson's characters expresses the same idea in much the same words:
"I had no medicine, sir, to walk invisible,
No fern-seed in my pocket."
In Butler's "Hudibras" reference is made to the anxieties we needlessly create for ourselves:
"That spring like fern, that infant weed,
Equivocally without seed,
And have no possible foundation
But merely in th' imagination."
In view of the fact that many ferns bear their spores or "fern-seed" somewhat conspicuously on the lower surfaces of their fronds, it seems probable that the "fern" of early writers was our common Brake, the fructification of which is more than usually obscure, its sporangia or "fern-seed" being concealed till full maturity by the reflexed margin of its frond. This plant is, perhaps, the most abundant and conspicuous of English ferns. Miss Pratt believes it to be the "fearn" of the Anglo-Saxons, and says that to its profusion in their neighborhood many towns and hamlets, such as Fearnborough or Farnborough, Farningham, Farnhow, and others owe their titles. The plant is a noticeable and common one also on the Continent.
