Benepict: CARL FREDERIK ALBERT CHRISTENSEN 55. 
plants. As already noted, he had occasion in the init 
of 1894-1895, to choose some group of plants as a “‘spe- 
ciale,”’ i. e., one which he !ad to study so thoroughly 
that he seit be said to know it perfectly. At that time 
he was engaged in collecting in the field, winter stages of 
the wild plants of his country. On one excursion, on a 
cold winter day when the ground was white with snow, 
he came into a beech forest where he found in the snow 
some fern leaves which were still quite fresh and green, 
__ offering a beautiful contrast to the white snow. He knew 
at that time scarcely more than a dozen fern species, and 
_ the beautiful leaves which he had found seemed entirely — 
unknown to him. He preserved some of the leaves: and 
as he later tried to identify them, he was struck with 
their beauty: in their beautiful outline and delicate” 
2 structure, they seemed to him seuhetiees ® far to surpass 
believed then to be the reputed hybric 
tata X spinulosa, sometimes identified with “ss 
