WINTER FERN-HUNTING 



giant shuttlecocks that thronged the 

 swale with a close-set tangle of feathery 

 green have vanished. 



I sought another moist and shady 

 woodland where all the early spring the 

 ground was a warm pinky brown with 

 the fuzz of uncurling fiddle heads, and 

 later the brown, leaf-carpeted earth was 

 hidden in a delicate lace patterned of the 

 young fronds of the cinnamon and the 

 interrupted fern. To this \voodland came 

 the yellow-warblers for the soft fuzz for 

 use in nest building, it compacting read- 

 ily into a felt-like mass that is at once 

 yielding and durable. The cinnamon 

 fern when it has reached any size has 

 an underground stump that is as woody 

 and tough almost as that of a tree. Its 

 strong fronds are next to those of the 

 ostrich-fern in the woody vigor of their 

 stipes. Surely these might have lasted, 

 73 



