1910] The Ottawa Naturalist. 67 



chiefly showing as blue clay or marl about the streams; the 

 woods are mostly hardwood, beech and maple; hardly anv 

 spruce, a good deal of hemlock and some white pine; cedar and 

 tamarack abundant in swampy parts; the upper soil sandy or 

 peaty; the country rolling and rich in springs. The fern-flora 

 is in the main characteristic of limestone districts; in some of 

 the higher parts the land is abundantly strewn with granite 

 boulders of gracial origin. 



My favorite haunt was a stretch of country from west to 

 east, some 5 miles north of Lake Ontario; rolling country with 

 rich hardwoods and upland pastures, peaty swamps in the 

 hollows and crested above with ridges of pine. The best ap- 

 proach from the town to the west end of this rolling country is 

 bv the Midland Railway going north from Port Hope towards 

 Peterborough; just west of the railway quite close to the town 

 lies Monkey Mountain, a tract of sandy turf and grassy slopes, 

 pine trees on the upper levels, and intersected by valleys full 

 of springs and swamps, with running streams of cold clear water 

 that harbour speckled trout. At the foot of the grass\' slopes 

 near swamp level are some fine colonies of 2 of our Osmundas, 

 the Cinnamon and the Interrupted Ferns. These fruit early in 

 June and before July the fertile fronds have begun to wither 

 awav; the more famous Royal Fern, Osmnnda regalis, I did not 

 find nearer than a tamarack swam^p 10 miles away, though last 

 summer I found to my delight a few plants of it just north of 

 my rolling country and quite close to the railway track. The 

 Royal Fern in maturity is a magnificent plant, but when young 

 it has a singular beauty of its own; the frond is coppery in hue, 

 lush and soft in texture, something like the young frond of the 

 Maidenhair with its half-furled drooping bannerets of vellowish 

 pink. 



The Maidenhair {Adiantum pedatum) is quite common in 

 our maple and beech woods in somewhat shaded situations, 

 wherever the soil is peaty and rich; it requires less shade than 

 the Oak Fern which otherwise is found in similar (or the same) 

 haunts. It is hard to analyse beauty, nor is it advisable; in the 

 Maidenhair Fern svmmetry has much to do with its charm; the 

 contrast of colour between the shining ebony stem with its hair- 

 like divisions above and the delicate green of the pinnae adds 

 not a little thereto; and the tree-like effects of the spreading 

 horse-shoe of branchlets set with wedge-shaped pinnae, trans- 

 lucent, membranous, like an oak of some fairy forest, of such 

 transcendent delicacy, this unites with the other qualities to 

 give the fern a dainty elegance and grace unrivalled among its 

 kind. 



