PROIIP VI FERTILE AND STERILE FRONDS LEAF-LIKE 

 AND USUALLY SIMILAR ; FRUIT-DOTS ROUND 



In the following passage Mr. Pringle describes his 

 pleasure, some years later, in the companionships 

 fostered by a common interest in his pet hobby : 



" . . . my delight in this preserve of boreal 

 plants was shared with not a few genial botanists. 

 Charles Faxon came before any of us suspected that 

 he possessed undeveloped talent for a botanical ar- 

 tist of highest excellence. Edwin Faxon followed 

 his young brother, and with me made the tedious as- 

 cent to Stirling Pond, a day of toil well rewarded. 

 Thomas Morong came, before the hardships of his 

 Paraguayan journey had broken him down. . . . 

 Our honored President came. . . . In those days, 

 as now, ... he was often my companion to add 

 delight to my occupation and to reinforce my en- 

 thusiasm. . . . The gentle Davenport came at 

 last to behold for the first time in their native haunts 

 many of the objects of his first love and study. When 

 I had found for him yet once more in a fifth Vermont 

 station (this was under Checkerberry Ledge, near 

 Bakersfield) the fern he at first desired, and, together 

 with that, had discovered within our limits three or 

 four others quite as rare and scarcely expected, I 

 might feel that I had complied with the request of his 

 letter. But that letter initiated a warm friendship 

 between us and association in work upon American 

 ferns, which has continued to the present time. 

 During these twenty-three years of botanical travel 

 on my part my hands have gathered all but thirty- 

 six of the one hundred and sixty-five species of North 

 American ferns, and from the more remote corners 



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