1910] The Ottawa Naturalist. 89 



is somewhat more slender; the pinnae, however, are strikingly 

 like those of Aspidium acrosiichoides and often auricled at the 

 base; the dark brown or ebony stalk and the nature of the fruit- 

 ing make it easily identified; the barren fronds, as in many ferns, 

 are smaller and less rigid, with wider pinnae. It is not a com^mon 

 fern in my experience, and this is the only station so far known 

 to me. A curious coincidence about finding it there was that one 

 of the fern authorities (I think Mrs. Dana) says she has found it 

 among red cedars; I had rarely, if ever, seen the red cedar grow- 

 ing, but it was noticeably abundant in the rocky open wood 

 where I was exploring that day. 



Towards the end of July I had planned to stay for a few 

 days in Lanark, north of Perth, and just before going there 

 I paid a visit to a tamarack swamp near Smith's Falls. On my 

 way there I skirted a somewhat rockv pasture with straggling 

 groves of maple and hemlock; in one of the wooded alleys near 

 the roadway I saw some large masses of a light green fern which 

 struck me as peculiar in its habit of grov/th; the fronds appeared 

 to be very long and to droop outwards, the clumps as a v/hole 

 looking like gushing fountains or spreading geysers of green; the 

 pinnae, I noticed on drawing near, were very finely cut like filigree 

 work ; it proved to be the Hav-scented Fern (Dicksonia puncti- 

 lobula) ; it is far from common about the Rideau, but its beautiful 

 spreading sheaves are a noteworthy feature of North Muskoka, 

 near Port Sydney. I found some more of it near Lanark in a 

 rich ijiaple wood, which provided me also with a second station 

 for the Narrow-leaved Spleenwort. The Dicksonia does not like 

 to be heavily shaded; it was in an open glade that I had first 

 found it ; it was growing in a clearing of the Lanark wood : in 

 Port Sydney it is abundant at the sides of the roads, and in the 

 Algonquin Park it usually occurs in disused lumber roads and on 

 the trails. 



Just north of the Village of Lanark I fotmd under some cedars 

 by the roadside my first colony of the Narrow Beech Fern 

 {Phegopteris polypodioides) ; some of the specimens I got were 

 at least as wide as long, but they wxre not the Broad Beech Fern 

 which I have never found; for some time, however, I thought 

 my find was Phegopteris hexagonoptera, but my first visit to the 

 Algonquin Park settled any doubts I had. 



During my few days at Lanark I drove to the head of Lake 

 Dalhousie, where the Missis.sippi rushes into the Lake from the 

 High Falls a little further up. The rock cliffs at the foot of the 

 gorge are some 200 feet high and pretty sheer. I scrambled up 

 the steep bank of talus to the foot of the cliff and made my way 

 along the side, facing up stream; after an hour's slow survey of 

 niches and crannies, and rummaging about among caves and 



