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see the ferns, but that one's attention is divided. Even 

 when one sets out to look for ferns and nothing but ferns, 

 one's eye is apt to be attracted by some bright colour or 

 by some unfamiliar flower. One has to pay for being a 

 general botanist by missing some things which would not 

 escape the pure Fern specialist. 



I have more troubles still, but in spite of them all, each 

 season finds me more interested in the study of Ferns, and 

 having acquired the taste for them, I suppose I shall 



never entirely lose my interest. 



S. P. Rowlands. 



FERN SPECIES AND VARIETIES. 



Not long since I received from ]\Ir. G. Eraser, of 

 Ucluelet, British Columbia, three Ferns named with as 

 many distinct specific names, but which to my mind we-e 

 beyond all doubt merely different forms of Polypodiiun 

 vnlgare, from which they only differed in the forms of the 

 fronds. One of these I was able to match almost exactly 

 with a variety found by Mr. O'Kelly in Ireland, and called 

 P. r. macvostachya . In this form the lower part of the frond 

 is normally pinnate, but the upper half is suddenly 

 contracted and undivided so as to form a long, tapering 

 finial. The Canadian plant merely emphasized this, the 

 tapered finial being much longer, so as to form two-thirds 

 of the length of the frond, so far as the leafy portion was 

 concerned. In every other respect the plant was 

 Polypodium vnlgare pure and simple. The other two plants 

 differed from this, and from each other. One was a 

 slender-fronded type with long, narrow, serrulate pinnae, 

 and terminating with a pinna set on end to form the 

 finial, and the other had narrow, longish pinnae, and a 

 finial somewhat, but not nearly, approaching the one first 

 described. All three were characterized by the orange 

 coloured hemispherical sori and the creeping rhizome of 

 our P. vnlgare, so that in point of fact there was no real 



