22 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



mats of iresh green. Long, narrow, dark-green leaves 

 grew in a sort of rossette from the very rock itself, so it 

 seemed, for when I took hold of a plant and gave a little 

 tug it all came up in my hand and there was the r(K'k,bare 

 but for a sprinkling of leaf-mold. One curious thing that I 

 couldn't make out at first was the way those leaves tap- 

 ered. They narrowed very gradually from the base until 

 they reached a point where it seemed the most natural 

 thingin the world that they should stop. But the}- didn't 

 stop. They \vent right on tapering until they could get 

 no narrower and then they curved over toward the rock, 

 making tiny green arches all bending outward from the 

 center of the plant. 



When3^ou see a plant doing an3^thing unusual you can 

 always find a reason for it if you look long enough. I 

 looked and looked and finally found a leaf which had gone 

 down into the moss and from its point sprang a little 

 baby plant which "favored" the parent sufficienth' to re- 

 move my last doubt. Perhaps I had felt it in m^^ bones at 

 the time for I was more delighted than surprised and fur- 

 ther search brought to light several other plants still fast- 

 ened securely to the parent leaf. 



I took one of the best specimens home with me and 

 show^ed it to exery one who came in. No one knew what 

 it v^as or had ever seen its like before. I had no book on 

 ferns to consult, but finally bethought me of two volumes 

 of Torrey's "New^ York State Botany" banished to the 

 peaceful seclusion of the garret because the terms used 

 therein were as Greek to me. Once these books had saved 

 themselves from a banishment even more remote than m3- 

 attic by showing a fine plate of "giant St. John'swort" 

 {Hypericum pyramidatum) when every other flower-book 

 that I knew had been looked through in vain So to the 

 attic I went, lugged the two heavy volumes down-stairs 

 and began my search. Of course I found my plant, luckily, 

 as in the previous case, there was a plate and it WAS a 

 fern, a walking-leaf fern, or as the book further asserted, 

 Asplenium rhizophyllum. 



