102 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Sept. 



sessile or short-stalked fruiting spike. In general outline, the 

 fertile part and the sterile both tend to spread into an ovate 

 form, not oblong as is usual in the other two species with the 

 sides nearly parallel. The barren part consists of from 2 to 4 

 pairs of narrow lanceolate pinnae, subdivided into narrow 

 lanceolate lobes or notched into sharp-pointed teeth; the fruit- 

 ing part is often not so much a spike as a fascicle of 3 or 4 slender 

 spikes, the central one often very little longer than 2 or 3 of the 

 others; these spread out, often not in the same plane, into an 

 ovate outline, and flanked with their clusters of sessile sporangia 

 suggest the lashes of a knout or cat-o'-nine-tails. 



The Lance-leaved Grape Fern is not at all common, as far 

 as I know, in Ontario. I had found B. ramosum fairly abundant 

 in the Algonquin Park in 1907 when I first visited that district; 

 B. lanceolatum I saw no traces of, and learned only in the autumn 

 from Mr. Ivey, of Toronto, that it occurred in our province; he 

 had found it near Port Sydney in a rich hardwood, occurring 

 with B. ramosum, but sparsely, occasional rather than abundant. 

 In 1909, as I was taking an English botanist to the Park and was 

 ver}' anxious to see B. lanceolatum growing, Mr. Ivey very gener- 

 ously sent me a pencil sketch of the wood in which the fern had 

 been found. 



Owing to the failure of our first attempt to reach the Chain 

 Fern I had only what time I could find before 1 1 a.m. in which 

 to identify the wood and reach the small space within it occupied 

 by the Lance-leaved Grape Fern. Not wishing to give my 

 friend a second wild goose chase after the previous day's ad- 

 ventures, I got up alone between 3 and 4 a.m., and with my boots 

 in my hand, crept stealthily down the boarding-house stairs in 

 stocking feet. Fortunately it was not Sunday; my movements 

 were not betrayed by my dropping a hob-nailed boot. The day 

 before had been thundery and the sky was dark with clouds, the 

 air heavy and close. It was daylight by my watch when I started 

 out, but even in the open road it was barely dawn, a kind of 

 tricky twilight, and to step into the woods was to shut and bolt 

 the door on day and enter a labyrinth of crepuscular gloom. For 

 nearly an hour I could not distinguish small objects on the ground 

 except by painful straining of the eyes. 



After two or three false starts, I satisfied myself that at 

 least I had found the right wood, and a rich hardwood it proved 

 to be. My experience in finding the Matricary Grape Fern led 

 me by a half-conscious process of selection and rejection to a 

 shaded slope and hollow of dead leaves just below some rock 

 ledges; sure enough there was B. ramosum, several plants, and 

 fine large ones, and as I knelt to examine them I spied 



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