THE PLANT WORLD 69 



mouth of a chasm. The animals had evidently slipped in from an over- 

 hanging bank and been held by the horns till their bodies dropped off. 

 Advancing into the dark forest I found the surface to be rugged beyond 

 anything I ever saw in mountain regions, being a succession of cliffs, 

 pits, chasms and rocks of all sizes and forms, the whole being covered 

 with spongy mold. And there was such a wonderful variety and pro- 

 fusion of beautiful West Indian ferns that after my first sensation of 

 delight, I felt appalled at the idea of collecting so many sets, and I was 

 then making 125 specimens of a kind. But having already secured most 

 of the species elsewhere, the task proved lighter than it at first seemed. 

 What gave me most trouble, as well as pleasure, was the splendid 

 Aspidium trifoUatum, then for the first time found in the United States. 



Eeturning to the wagon with my large collection of ferns in boxes 

 we rode till dark, when we came to a small deserted house by the road- 

 side and there concluded to stay over night. I at once went to work to 

 put my ferns in press and soon discovered that the house was full of 

 fleas and decided that there would be no sleep for me that night and 

 that the best plan was to sit up and work all night. That I did, and by 

 the time breakfast was ready all of the specimens were nicely arranged 

 in press. 



Any fern lover who finds himself in Florida should make it a point 

 to visit the station of Aspidium trifoUatum, for he will find more choice 

 ferns there than he might come across during weeks of travel. It is 

 situated on the Waycross, High Springs & Lakeland line of the Plant 

 System of railways, between the stations named Floral Citj' and Ista- 

 chatta. I stopped at the latter place a few jears ago and found a fine 

 lot of Ceratopteris a short distance northwest of the station house in a 

 pond situated in a low hammock bordering the river. There were also 

 a great many young plants of Ceratopteris lodged along the river shores. 



The fern hammock, as I call it (the wood hammock being a south- 

 ern substitute for forest, erroneously compounded with hummock by 

 lexicographers), I reached by riding about two miles northward and then 

 walking about one mile through fields. The ferns most abundant are 

 Asplenium myriophyllimi, A. firmiim and A. parvulum, Pteris cretica, 

 Adiantum tenerum, Aspidium patens and A. trifoUatum. On my first visit, 

 when I struck another part of the hammock, I collected Polypodium 

 pectinatum, and on my last I found Phegopteris reptans (a "walking 

 leaf ") in one spot. I never went far into the hammock, being prevented 

 either by lack of time or bad weather. It would be imprudent to explore 

 this hammock alone. The last day I was there a slender sapling was 

 all that saved me from falling backward from a ledge of rock over a sharp 

 rock below. A day or two later a prominent citizen while hunting in 

 the same hammock had his back broken and died after thirtv-six hours 



