88 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Aug. 



plants growing in interwoven masses, a tangle there is no un- 

 ravelling. 



The little Black Spleenwort I had never seen growing in 

 its native wild before. But I recognized in it at first glance the 

 plant that I had seen as a boy of 10 years old in the pedlar's pack 

 of a veteran fern-hunter in Perthshire; he had lifted it out with 

 pride to show me as part of the spoils at the end of his long day's 

 tramp to Glen Almond. He called it the Scotch Maidenhair and 

 told me it was getting scarce in our neighbourhood of Crieff. It 

 has a close kinsman in the Green Spleenwort, which is found in 

 Ontario about the Bruce Peninsula. In size and shape of frond 

 the ferns are indistinguishable, but the stipe of the Black Spleen- 

 wort is a shining ebony at the base and dark brown above to 

 the apex of the rhachis; in the Green Spleenwort the stalk is 

 iDrownish at the base and green above. I have found both 

 species fairty abundant about mountain torrents and shaded 

 glens in Argyllshire and high up on the hills of North Wales. 



Altogether, along about half a mile of this little stream I 

 have found 24 species of fern. The Christmas Fern is not nearly 

 as comjmon about the Rideau as at Port Hope, and I have not 

 found the Narrow-leaved Spleenwort or the Goldie's Shield Fern 

 at all, but on the other hand the Polypody is abundant; its 

 favorite home is on top of a shaded rock wall. 



Later in July I was on a picnic excursion, to the Big Rideau, 

 that landed on the north shore nearly opposite Sand Island. 

 This shore at one place rises to a high cliff of exposed rock; here 

 I found an abundant growth of the Rusty Woodsie (Woodsia 

 ilvensis) ; it seems to enjoy exposed situations and will fill up the 

 rock seams in lufts as dense as those of the British Parsley Fern 

 in the slate ledges of the Lake District. A peculiar feature about it 

 and two or three other species of Woodsia is t hat the stipe is joint- 

 ed; an inch or so above the base you v>- li see an obscure thick- 

 ening of the stalk; when the frond dies it breaks off at this joint. 



Just behind the shore, a good deal higher than the level of the 

 lake, the country consists of rocky open woods, chiefly poplar and 

 oak. In these woods I found much to interest the naturalist : the 

 Fragrant or Canada Sumach, and on it, feeding on its leaves and 

 breeding there, large numbers of a Chrysomelian beetle, 

 Blepharida rhois ; the Steeple Bush or red spiraea (S. tomentosa); 

 the Red Cedar {Juniperus virginiana); also, on the sun-baked 

 surface of great weather-worn rocks, the Selaginella rupestris; in 

 the shaded recesses of the rocks, the Black Spleenwort. and near 

 it the beautiful Ebony Spleenwort (Asplenium pJaiyneuron); 

 this last usually not in the rock ledges, but in stony ground a 

 little way out from the Black Spleenwort 's favorite haunt. It 

 has much the appearance of the Christmas Fern, but the frond 



