THE CHRISTMAS FERN. 69 



ful to keep a certain radius from the man who 

 bears one of them. A few of them may get the 

 surprise of their lives if I can find them still 

 long enough to take good aim and pull the 

 trigger of my rifle. Even if the bullet does not 

 enter their anatomy it will hum for them a 

 keen air-splitting little tune which will soon 

 teach them to treble the length of that radius 

 whose outer end has heretofore marked the 

 dead line between them and the man behind 

 the gun. 



The Christmas fern 19 , the upper tapering 

 halves of its fronds dark brown beneath with 

 great masses of fruiting spores, flourishes along 

 the crest of this bluff. The false Solomon's 

 seal 20 and the wild hydrangea 21 are its most 

 common companions. Mosses in dense gray 

 tufts and lichens of many kinds also spring 

 from the sandy clay soil. 



This soil is derived in great part from the 

 decaying of the gray flaky Knobstone which 

 comes close to the surface on the uplands of 

 these ridges. The residual clay from this Knob- 

 stone is composed mainly of silica or sand, 

 alumina, iron oxide and a little magnesia, none 

 of the essential plant foods occurring in the 

 parent rock. No carbonate of lime, with its 

 accompanying fossils rich in phosphates, is 



l9 Dryopteris acrostichoides Michx. M Vagnera racemosa L. 

 21 Hydrangea arborescens L. 



