8 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



touch of color among the leaves, and stooping to examine the 

 little trailing vines, I was surprised to find them heavy with 

 bunches of fat seed vessels. Each pod was about the size of 

 a pea, but ribbed and furry coated, dimpled at the top and rosy 

 as some ripening peach of fairyland. They made a pretty 

 sight — these nursling pods nestled amid motherly leaves — and 

 though they are no great rarity if sought for, yet if I should 

 have taken a bunch of them home and shown them to a 

 hundred people who that spring had joyed in the spicy perfume 

 of arbutus flowers, possibly not one would have known what 

 these pods were. Nevertheless these — rather than the blos- 

 soms — represent the goal of the plant's life of a year ; for upon 

 these treasure boxes, which in summer days crack open and 

 scatter a myriad seeds abroad, rests the hope of the trailing 

 arbutus's continuance in the earth. — C. F. Saunders in The 

 Churcliinan. 



A NEW FERN. 



BY WILLARD N. CLUTE. 



WITHOUT doubt the fern flora of our country is better 

 known than any other part of the plant covering. New 

 species of algae, fungi, mosses and flowering plants are con- 

 stantly being described but the finding of a new fern is an ex- 

 ceedingly rare event. This is due in part to the thoroughness 

 with which our ferns have been studied and in part to the 

 small number of ferns that grow in our region. Ferns are, of 

 course, most abundant in moist tropical regions and decrease 

 in numbers as we go from the equator to the poles, or from 

 the valleys to the mountain-tops. In North America, north of 

 Mexico, there are probably not more than 225 different spe- 

 cies, though the range of several is continent-wide. With 

 changing ideas of species and varieties, forms of these better- 

 known plants may be described as new species from time to 

 time, but species that are absolutely new, in the sense that they 



