228 VIRGINIA 



most graceful curving or drooping Habit. 

 This I could not make out for a time ; but 

 it proved to be, as I soon began to suspect, 

 Cystopteris hulbifera, to my thinking one 

 of the loveliest of all things that grow. I 

 had seen it abundant at Willoughby, Ver- 

 mont, and at Owl's Head, Canada, ten years 

 before ; but either my memory was playing 

 me a trick, or there was here a very consid- 

 erable diminution in the length of the fronds, 

 accompanied by a decided heightening in the 

 color of the stalk and rhachis. Before long, 

 however, I found a specimen already begin- 

 ning to show its bulblets, and these, with a 

 study of Dr. Eaton's description, left me in 

 no doubt as to the plant's identity. 



What other ferns may have been growing 

 in the ravine I cannot now pretend to say. 

 I remember the Christmas fern, a goodly 

 supply of the dainty little Asplenium tricho- 

 manes^ and tufts of what I took with rea- 

 sonable certainty for Cystopteris fragilis 

 in its early spring stage, than which few 

 things can be more graceful. On the upper 

 edge of the ravine, when I left the place 

 one day by following a maze of zigzag cattle- 

 paths up the steep slope, and found myself, 



