126 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Jan. 



in detritus of cedar and spruce. It has always been, to my 

 mind, a form of B. simplex peculiar to moist, shady situations. 

 The plant ranges from 2 or 3 to 6 or 8 inches in height. The 

 barren frond consists of from one to four or five pairs of lunate 

 sessile lobes, opposite to alternate, and terminates in a notched 

 lobe. This barren leaf is decidedly fleshy ; apparently the plant 

 seldom lives more than three or four seasons, for though in a 

 colony I have found hundreds of plants, the vast majority ap- 

 pear to have sprung recently from wind-blown spores, and to 

 be not more than two years old. Very rarely large plants are 

 found with four or five pairs of lobes on the barren frond, and, 

 still more rarely, in such patriarchs of the colony the basal pair 

 of lobes show a tendency to become compound by branching 

 out into similar lobes. My first specimens were sent to the late 

 Prof. Fletcher, in Ottawa. He inclined to think them B. matri- 

 cariae (ramosum), but was not familiar with these smaller 

 inembers of the genus, so handed them over to Prof. Macoun. 

 He also thought them B. matricariae. 



Next season I found the genuine B. matricariae by hundreds 

 in the iVlgonquin Park, but remained convinced that my 

 earlier find was B. simplex. Later on I fotmd the strange fern 

 in the Rideau district, and still never wavered, though I was 

 unable to get more than a doubtful assent to my view from other 

 collectors in the Province. Then I sent specimens of both ferns 

 to W. N. Clute, of the Fern Bulletin, but to my chagrin he too 

 pronounced the stranger a variety of the Matricary Fern; luck 

 was against me, it seemed the wind simply wotildn't blow my 

 way. At last (more than four years ago) I sent specimens to 

 Prof. Robinson, of the Asa Gray Herbarium, and waited for 

 nearly a year. Then I wrote again,, and heard that my first 

 consignment had gone astray or been lost. By this time I was 

 desperate, but made my last venture with a parcel of specimens 

 to Harvard, from five or six different localities. My Argosy 

 came to port safely with its precious cargo, and I got word that 

 every specimen forwarded in the half-dozen sheets of plants, 

 was undoubtedly B. simplex. 



If the last week in Owen Sound was wet, our three weeks 

 under canvas on Birch Island were to prove little better. But 

 we managed to snatch a few days and half days out of the de- 

 luge and salvage them to some profit. We gathered black- 

 berries and raspberries galore; we caught lake trout and black 

 bass, we made flapjacks and jam, and ate them too; and every 

 now and then^'we paddled our own canoe (a new one) to various 

 portages and explored the trails. Once I made my way to the 

 back of "Skymount" and gathered in, from a certain trough 

 of the hardwoods that I had found years before, specimens of 





