BRIEFER ARTICLES. 
Vitality of Marsilia quadrifolia——A most remarkable instance of 
the retention of vitality in the spores of this plant has recently come 
to my notice. In the summer of 1892 I gathered fertile specimens at 
Fresh Pond, near Cambridge, Mass. The rhizomes and their attached 
sporocarps were at once put into commercial alcohol (95%) and have 
been kept therein continuously to the present time. Spores from 
specimens used by a student in morphology (Miss Anna Tarnutzer) were 
left in water in the dissecting dishes for several days. When about to 
clean up the dishes Miss Tarnutzer was surprised to find young plants 
in the water. She called my attention to them and examination 
showed that they were young sporophytes of Marsilia, with shoots an 
inch or more long and roots well developed. 
It was thought that this might be exceptional, and Miss Tarnutzer 
was directed to select spores from a freshly opened sporocarp and sow 
them in water. These also germinated as did many others which were 
tried, and the class was able to study the prothallium and sexual or- 
gans as well as the developing sporophyte. 
The sporocarp of this plant is of course very resistent, but one 
would hardly expect it to be able to exclude alcohol so completely 
during three years immersion as to leave both microspores and mega- 
spores capable of germination.—CHARLES R. BARNES, University of 
Wisconsin. 
Aspidium simulatum DaveNportT.—Since the publication of this 
species I have received specimens for examination from a number of 
sources and found that my suspicion in regard to its having been many 
times collected for either Aspidium Thelypteris or A. Noveboracense was 
well founded. 
I give the following additional stations not only as an indication of 
its range, but as positive evidence that botanists may expect to find it 
masquerading under one or the other of its congeners’ names in their 
herbaria: 
“Sawmill Pond, Anne Arundel co., Maryland, October 1, 1894, in 
wet thickets and quite plentiful.” 
Collected by C. E. Waters, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 
who writes that “the sporangia were still unopened, but so nearly ripe 
that on taking the fronds from the damp driers the dry air caused the 
spOrangia to open so rapidly that a decided crackling noise could be 
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