1910] The Ottawa Naturalist. 69 



the same size as the average Shield Fern (e.g., the Spinulose or 

 the Marginal), but the texture of its frond is far more delicate; 

 the sori are oblong, but being placed along the twisting veinlets 

 of the pinnules they usually curve bow-wise into a horse-shoe 

 shape. The indusium opens along one side as the spores ripen. 

 The stipe of the Lady Fern is often reddish in colour. 



A wood of maple, beech and hemlock some 5 miles out from 

 Port Hope forms the west end of the rolling country I have 

 before referred to ; through the midst of it between springy and 

 steep high banks flows a stream; the wood has many deep rich 

 hollows of peat and leaf -mould; it is luxuriant with plant life, 

 having an unusual range of violets and lilies and some uncommon 

 orchids, such as Hooker's Rein-orchid and the Showy Orchid. 

 For a small wood whose greatest diameter is perhaps half a mile, 

 it is quite the richest in ferns that I know. And that not merely 

 in number of species but in actual quantity; with hardly an 

 exception, the ferns that occur there at all fairly run riot within 

 its shelter. Observing the order in which the ferns are treated, 

 besides the Oak Fern, the Maidenhair and the Bracken which 

 in congenial surroundings abound in the wood, there are all 

 three of the largest Spleenworts; the Lady Fern and the Silvery 

 Spleenwort are abundant, some plants and patches of wonderful 

 size; the oblong fruit -clusters of the latter with the indusium 

 silverv-white until the spores ripen make it easily recognized; 

 it fruits freely, the oblong clusters standing out obliquely from 

 the midvein of the pinnule, suggestive of a small fish's backbone. 

 The third species I have found there is the Narrow-leaved Spleen- 

 wort, which fruits even more freely and in the same peculiar 

 way; the sori, however, are larger, cylindrical rather than flatly 

 oblong; the frond is of a delicate texture, the pinnae are simple 

 and entire, in the form of a long tapering acuminate pennant; 

 in the fertile fronds the pinnae are much contracted and so closely 

 do the sori stand together that the whole under surface forms 

 an unbroken series of contiguous cylinders of spore cases. The 

 fern is far from common and in all this wood there is only one 

 small colony about a square yard in extent. In August, 1909, 

 I was fortunate enough to find two other stations for the Narrow- 

 leaved Spleenwort, one near Lanark and the other near Otty 

 Lake between Perth and the Rideau. A peculiar feature of the 

 Narrow-leaved Spleenwort is its frequent companionship with 

 the Goldie's Shield Fern. In Niagara Glen below the Whirlpool 

 Rapids, both plants are found together in the rich leaf-mould 

 and peat where the ground is swampy, and here in this little 

 wood near Port Hope within a few yards of the little patch of 

 Asplenium angustijolium were plants of the Goldie's Fern. The 



