2 20 FERA'S. 



increase. Some necessary check must take place to keep these plants 

 within proper limits or they are borne on the wings of the winds to far 

 distant places. 



The most prolific of our Fern family appears to be the Onoclea 

 sensibilis, which produces vast numbers of seedling plants year after 

 year, and as this fern grows in great profusion in my neighborhood I 

 have been able to pay close attention to it and its mode of growth. 



Our native ferns seem to be divided by their peculiar habits into 

 three groups : i, those that love the deep shade and rich leaf-mould of 

 the forest, with its cool glades and sheltered hollows, as the Aspidiums 

 and Aspleniums ; 2, those that delight in wet, spongy soil on the banks 

 of streams and low-lying swampy lake shores, as the Osmundas and 

 Onocleas ; 3, those that find a congenial soil in rocky ravines and 

 rugged, mountainous ridges. Few ferns can live on the open, sunny 

 plains like the hardy Bracken, Pteris aqul/ina, which bears, uninjured, 

 the full glare of the mid-summer sun. 



As a general thing the fern shuns the glare of sunshine, turning 

 brown and scorching under the influence of heat and drying winds ;. 

 heat and moisture are essential to the healthy development of this 

 beautiful tribe of plants. Therefore it is that we find the finest 

 specimens in damp ground and in warm sheltered woods, while for 

 beauty and rare grace of form, the rock ferns are peculiarly interesting, 

 presenting on a smaller scale features more attractive even than the 

 larger and more luxuriant ferns of the forest and the lake-shore, grand 

 as they are in their development of graceful form and richness of 

 verdure. It is as if Nature, to compensate these rare plants, the rock- 

 ferns, for the rude soil and rough elements, had shed over her nurslings 

 additional charms. 



Among our native rock-growing ferns the most noticeable are the 

 Rock Polypody, Polypodiuin vidgare ; Rock Cystopteris, Cystopteris 

 fragilis, a most lovely, graceful, drooping fern ; Rock Brake, Pelhea 

 gracilis, a very small but very lovely species which chooses the crevices 

 of the hmestone rocks on the banks of rapid rivers as its home, in steep 

 ridges, almost inaccessible to the foot and eager hand that covets the 

 tender green fronds with which it veils the perpendicular rocky face of 

 its cliff-like abode. 



The Woodsias love the clefts of rocks where the soil is black, and 

 into which their wiry rootlets can penetrate and withstand the force of 

 winds and rain. The Holly Fern and Fvergreen Rock Fern, our finest 

 Polystichums, flourish in stony forest lands. 



From the far distant Hudson's Bay Go's Posts of Lac la Biche and 

 Lesser Slave Lake, I have received specimens of several ferns : a very 



