1916] The Ottawa Naturalist, 12 7 



Botrychiuni ramosum and Botrychium lanceolatum, and on the 

 return trip (for curiosity) Botrychiuni Virginianum and Botry- 

 chium ternatum. Another day, after gathering plants of Aspi- 

 dium fragrans from a cliff overlooking the lumber slide on the 

 Madawaska, I crossed the railway and explored the woods for 

 shaded cliffs. Here I stumbled on a veritable El Dorado, for 

 on three successive outcrops of rock in the depths of the forest, 

 I found clump after clump of silvery green fronds — the Fragrant 

 Shield Fern in all its aromatic loveliness. Passifig out from the 

 woods to the cliff exposed at the lake shore, I found dense 

 masses of Woodsia ilvensis, but no more Aspidimn fragrans. 



These two or three trips sent my enthusiasm up to fever 

 heat, and whenever I saw a piece of woodland, the botanist 

 in me ettled to explore it, and as the woods were ever}rwhere, 

 I was forever diving into their recesses and carefully scanning 

 the ground for some lilliputian treasure, or hurrying over to a 

 line of cliffs in the background. 



That will-o'-the-wisp of the unknown led me many a dance 

 all to no purpose ; but one day, while exploring a piece of cliff 

 near one of the trails, I found a small fern growing in the rock 

 seams that I could not reconcile with any familiar species. It 

 was much like the Brittle Bladder-fern in frond, but the root- 

 stock was different; it was very much like the Rusty Woodsia, 

 but neither "rusty" nor jointed; it grew in loose, detached 

 moss at the'^base of the cliff, up and down a vertical seam, along 

 a horizontal ledge, and inside a crevice some 20 feet up; it ex- 

 tended over 30 or 40 yards of the cliff, and formed a colony 

 of three or four score plants. It was closely tufted, the stipes 

 were dark brown, and the rhachis and frond covered with 

 white hairs and yellow resinous glands. I had no microscope, 

 nor even a table, in camp, but I made the plant out to be 

 Woodsia scopulina. A guest in our camp, who scorns to be 

 initiated into the noble brotherhood of "men of grass" (to 

 use the title given to Douglas by the Indians), went so far as 

 to school his wife to greet me on my return to civilization with 

 the magic password : ' ' Woodsia Scopulina. ' ' I understand there 

 were dress rehearsals of the scene, but the best laid schemes 

 of mice and men gang aft agley, and when there fell on my 

 ear words that sounded like " Woodulina Scopsia," I was only 

 a little less bewildered than the old bishop who, wakened out 

 of slumber at a country vicarage by a thunderous knock at his 

 bedroom door, and asking in quavering tones "Who's there?" 

 heard the appalling response: "The Lord, my boy." 



Specimens of the new find were sent to the Asa Gray Herb- 

 arium at Harvard, and identified at first sight as Woodsia 

 obtusa, but Mr. J. M. Macoun, at the Victoria Museum, Ottawa, 



