1915] The Ottawa Naturalist. 109 



wooded pasture near the cliff, where limestone strata cropped 

 out of the grass, were several large plants o*f the Holly Fern! 

 And some of them actually showing signs of having been chewed 

 by that omnivorous ruminant, the domestic cow. You may 

 well imagine what a rude disillusionment and shock it was to 

 me, when I tell you that the only other time I had seen this fern 

 was 3,000 feet up the steep side of lone Ben Lui, in the Perth- 

 shire Grampians. It is abundant in the Rockies, and all through 

 this limestone district, from Collingwood west to Tobermory, 

 at the head of the Bruce Peninsula, it fairly runs riot. While 

 slowly moving along at the foot of the cliff, I found in the course 

 of a few hundred yards, plants of Purple Cliff -brake. Slender 

 Clift'-brake, Black Spleenwort, and finally, to grace the triumph, 

 a fine colony of Green Spleenwort. This fern is almost identical 

 with the Black, except that the stalk is brown at the base, and 

 then green from the upper part of the stipe to the tip of the 

 frond. It is abundant on mountain heights in Wales, North 

 England and Scotland, and I have seen it once in Ontario, grow- 

 ing on deeply shaded limestone ledges by the Speed, near Rock- 

 wood. Later, I found it growing abundantly on detached 

 limestone boulders in the v/oods below Sydenham Falls, near 

 the opposite cliff that flanks the east of the city. By this time 

 it was late in the afternoon, and I returned to headquarters. 



Next day I v/ent out to Sydenham Falls, and rambled in the 

 wood below, with its rich, swampy hollows filled with Narrow- 

 leaved and Silvery Spleenvv^orts, Goldie's Fern and Maidenhair, 

 and found (along with more Holly Fern) the treasure for which 

 the district is noted, the far-famed Hart's Tongue. This fern is 

 very plentiful in the west of England, and in parts of Somerset 

 and Devon fairly chokes the v/ayside ditches and hedgerows. 

 But on the American continent it is extremely rare, Woodstock 

 in New Brunswick, Central New York and Tennessee providing 

 the only known stations for it outside of Ontario. It belongs 

 to the talus at the foot of limestone cliffs, or to moist shady 

 situations in limestone districts; at one time it was apparently 

 more generally distributed, and specimens are recorded from 

 Niagara, as well as many widely divergent points of Bruce and 

 Grey counties. Among the ferns of temperate regions, the 

 Hart's Tongue is almost unique in form, the frond being simple 

 and entire — ^like a long, narrow dock leaf — but the surface, 

 like that of the Holly Fern, is smooth and glossy. Near the 

 Sydenham Falls this rarity proved very abundant, both belov/ 

 the cataract and above, the crevices of the limestone floor 

 throughout the extensive woods being filled with plants of this 

 and the Holly Fern. The growth of the fronds below the falls 

 was very luxuriant, soinetimes from 24 to 30 inches. Before 



