weston HAVE YOU A NATURE HOBBY 185 



pasture and they would show it to us soon. A few days later 

 we were taken to the place where it grew on the slanting top of a 

 good-sized rock in the woods near the brook. The top of the 

 rock was covered thick with the rank growth of the fern. 1 was 

 given a plant to take home with me which lived until another 

 season and put out new fronds but did not form new plants and 

 walk. It soon after died much to my regret. The brook in the 

 cow pasture flowed through a little ravine on the sides of which 

 we found many little maidenhairs and ebony spleenworts growing. 

 When my vacation was over I had learned at least twelve 

 varieties of ferns. Upon my return I secured several fern books 

 and have gradually added more ferns to my list until I now 

 have identified very nearly forty varieties." 



Miss Lillibridge has made a beautiful collection of ferns which 

 may be seen at the Roger Williams Park Museum. 

 Mr. H. Emerson Heyer writes on: 



Trees as a Hobby 



"To beginners in the Book of Nature — and the wisest scientists 

 are hardly more than that — the study of trees offers unusual al- 

 lurements. Like the poor, we have them always with us: but, 

 unlike the poor, they shed beneficence throughout the community, 

 asking nothing in return but a chance to lift their leafy tops into 

 God's fresh air and sunshine, and to send their roots deep down 

 into the cuticle of Mother Earth in quest of food and anchorage. 



Thus the trees are goodly folk to know: but how can we say 

 we really know them unless we know their names? Here we are 

 indeed fortunate if we choose trees rather than wild flowers 

 or grasses or, worst of all, insects for our hobby, for while the 

 species in some of these other lines are numbered in the hundreds, 

 even in the thousands, and christened, in many instances with 

 nothing but an awesome Latin name, the trees we shall meet in 

 Rhode Island comprise rather less than one hundred and fifty 

 species, every one bearing a pronounceable common name. 



And their identification is comparatively easy, in most cases. 

 To be sure there are some puzzlers among the oaks, and scientists 

 will wrangle for years to come over certain fine points of differ- 

 ence among the willows and the thorns : but we need not concern 

 ourselves with these. We need only to familiarize ourselves 



