130 THE PLANT WORLD. 



shaped at the base and tapering rather sharply at the tip. T^e saving 

 features are the intense greenness, the crispness and the waxiness of the 

 fronds. There is nothing leathery about them, as has frequently been 

 asserted; they are extremely succulent, and quick to wilt upon rough 

 treatment. Every frond is coarsely fluted, so that each wave shows 

 to advantage the peculiar ciiaracteristic glossiness. There has been no 

 dearth of material in tlieir making! and their very rankness seems in 

 harmony with environment. Theirs is indeed an ideal habitat; usually 

 a rough slope of limestone fragments, — the talus of high clifl's — })ro- 

 tected l)y a tolerably dense growth of deciduous trees. The soil is of 

 the richest, — dark-colored and as "woodsy" as wood-soil uiay be — sup- 

 porting a variety of other ferns, such as the omnipresent l)njoj)teris 

 inarginaltx, with D. GolJieann, and Asplenitini an gusti folium. Under 

 such conditions the fern attains a magnificent development in a half 

 dozen stations in Central New York, where it was first found in the 

 United States early in this century by Pursh. 



A very difl'erent order of things prevails in the Tennessee station 

 at South IMttsburg. Here, hidden in a great i)it or "sink-hole" some 

 ninety feet deep and sixty l)y forty feet across at the opening, it was 

 discovered by the late Major Cheathem in 1879. It was with great 

 pleasure that Mr. Pollard and myself found ourselves able to visit this 

 peculiar location upon the third of last August. The sink is located 

 about two miles to the southwest of the village, half way up the slope 

 of a spur of the Cumberlands that runs out to the eastward. Its walls 

 are perpendicular and without foothold on two sides, and on the other 

 two retreat to form a cave which extends beneath the cliffs. A little 

 stream from the wooded hillside above winds among the rocks, and 

 tumbles precipitately into the mouth of the sink, striking a projecting 

 ledge below, and dripping from the clifl's in little jets and splashes. 

 We gain a fair idea of the picturesqueness of the place from above; 

 fortunately we are provided with seventy-five feet of rope; otherwise 

 access is impossible without felling a goodsized tree, — unless one 

 elects to tumble fifty or sixty feet. We find the rope and pulley ser- 

 viceable, though somewhat jarring, and are landed sixty feet below upon 

 the higher rocky slopes of the bottom. Across and above to the right 

 is the miniature cascade. A few of the ferns are there upon the wet 

 cliffs, almost within the spray; but the great majority — more than a 

 hundred, I think — are at our feet on the leveler clayey floor under the 

 partial shelter of the projecting ledge. The soil is a light-colored 



