100 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Sept. 



and after going almost to the waist more than once in a hole 

 among the bushes of bog-myrtle, Labrador Tea and other shrubs 

 we drew back a little from the lake and entered a narrow fringe 

 of cedars at whose outer edge cropped out the rock that forms 

 the foundation of the raised plateau mentioned before. I was 

 just in the act of exclaiming about the similarity of this belt of 

 cedars to the Newtonville cedar wood, when my pupil shouted to 

 me to come and look at a strange plant he had found. Drooping, 

 faded and yellow, it was the same B. simplex as I had found at 

 Newtonville ! We agreed to go diflferent ways in search of more 

 specimens along this fringe of cedars only a few yards wide ; both 

 of us were successful in finding more plants over a distance of 

 200 yards or more. More than 100 miles east of the first station, 

 in conditions otherwise almost identical, the appearance of the 

 plants differed not at all; the sterile part having a long-stalk, 

 3 or 4 pair of sessile, simple and entire cuneate lobes, and ending 

 in a single similar but notched lobe. 



Of course, these smaller Grape Ferns are a very variable 

 genus, and for a long time confusion existed betvsreen simplex, 

 ramosum and larceola'um. Some botanists have yielded to the 

 temptation of rrultiplying species by the separation of varieties, 

 while others have nullified sound distinci ions bv confusing 

 young irrrrature plants of ramosum. (for instance) with full- 

 grown plants of simplex. From their habitat I have come to 

 the conclusion that these plants of mine are the same as those 

 described by A. A. Ealon as B. ienebrosi^m, and I was therefore 

 greatly interested to find, on looking at the new edition of Gray 

 f.cucbrosnm treated as a variant form of simplex and not ram- 

 osum. Manv qualities relied on for final identification, such as the 

 vernation or manner of folding in the bud, the venation or form 

 in which the veins spread, are doubtless of secondary importance 

 but the long stalk of the sterile leaf and the shape of its lobes are 

 possibly more essential characters, and there is another point on 

 which I have assured myself; the point relied on by the late 

 D. C. Eaton, author of Ferns of North America; I mean the size 

 of the spores. 



I got by exchange a few plants of the normal B. simplex 

 (2-4 inches high), and I have looked microscopically at the 

 spores of B. simplex, B. ram.ost{m and my strange plant ; through 

 a lens of 1 inch objective, the spores of my plant and the spores 

 of B. simplex are both larger than the spores of B. ramostim; 

 through a lens of \ inch objective there is no difference to be 

 detected in the size of spores of the two former plants, but the 

 spores of both are (apparently) as large again as those of 

 B. ramosum. 



