90 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Aug 



alcoves, I made a find that greitly pleased me; in some wet rock 

 fissures I found growing the Slender Cliff Bra.ke(Pellaea gracilis 

 or Cryptogramma Stellen). The books say it is rarely, if ever, 

 found away from limestone; these cliffs, however, are granite or 

 sandstone. There were two stations for the fern along the cliff, 

 about half a mile distant from one another ; one station contained 

 2 or 3 colonies some yards apart, the other only a single colony. 

 The Slender Cliff Brake is the most delicate and frail fern I know. 

 The stalks are almost threadlike in their thinness and very brittle; 

 there is quite a marked difference between the sterile and the 

 fertile fronds; the frond in fruit has its divisions narrow and 

 pointed, the margins being recurved over the sporangia; in the 

 sterile frond the pinnae have not recurved margins, and the 5 or 6 

 lobes into which they are divided instead of being a narrow 

 lanceolate are wide spreading, ovate to orbicular, with a crenate 

 margin. The fern grows in tufts out of rock seams with a habit 

 like that of the Brittle Bladder Fern ; the fronds when pressed are 

 of so filmy a texture that the mere act of breathing over them 

 will waft them off the sheet on which thev lie. 



In order to make myself familiar with the genus, I paid a 

 special visit that autumn to Niagara Glen, where, on the sheer 

 limestone cliffs above the gorge, the Purple Cliff Brake is abund- 

 ant. It presents as remarkable a contrast to the Slender Cliff 

 Brake as can well be imagined. The stipe is stout and woody, 

 the foliage thick and leathery, bluish greei;i in colour. Of course 

 the kinship of the two is close and obvious, the sporangia being 

 'damped beneath the reflexed margins of the pinnules; but in 

 the true Pellaeas the difference between fertile and sterile fronds 

 is slight, in the Crypt ogrammes, such as Steller's Cliff Brake and 

 the Parsley Fern it is quite marked. 



My next trip of any consequence was a visit to the Algonquin 

 Park by way of Ottawa. Like all visitors to the Park, we first 

 called on Mr. Bartlett, the Superintendent. In addition to his 

 intimate knowledge of this fine tract of forest and lake, Mr. 

 Bartlett has a great love of natural history, and the jiora and 

 fauna of the Park interest him quite independently of his official 

 position. Hearing that I was specially fond of ferns he handed 

 me over a small plant growing in a box and asked me what it 

 was. I looked carefully at it and decided it was a Shield Fern, 

 but the species was beyond me. I was then told to smell it; 

 there could be no mistaking that sweet spicy fragrance; when I 

 found that the Fragrant Shield Fern grew in the Park and was 

 obtainable not far from Headquarters, I could scarcely wait till 

 next da}'. The scent from the resinous glands on the under side 

 of the frond is indescribably delicious. 



The fern was not abundant in the neighbourhood, but was 



