6 American Fern Journal 



made of — to name its more prominent constituents 

 blue sage, yellow-rattle, a species or two of the Legumi- 

 nosae, a lousewort, globe-flowers, a very dark purple 

 columbine, a pale lavender plantain, an occasional hare- 

 bell or Phyteuma, two or three species of Orchis, an under- 

 growth of Euphrasia and Viola tricolor and two or three 

 composites of the hawk weed persuasion, thrown in for 

 good measure. Grass is, apparently, a negligible ele- 

 ment. The Dolomite cows must need all their stomachs 

 to dispose properly of so mixed a diet. However, we 

 were forced to conclude that it agreed with them; for 

 they produce excellent butter and are expert mountain- 

 climbers in addition. 



A great part of my own wayside observations was 

 devoted to ferns, since most of the species in that group 

 were either familiar to me or readily recognizable. In 

 the Ampezzo valley, the commonest species was Cystop- 

 teris fragilis — so common that my notes dismiss t with 

 the single word " everywhere/' 



A good second, in point of abundance, was the wall-rue 

 spleenwort, Asplenhun Ruta-muraria. To one who lives 

 in a sandy New England valley, and is obliged to travel 

 many miles and to seek out certain particular ledges in 

 order to get a sight of it, the abundance of this species 

 in the southern Tyrol is positively disconcerting. It grows 

 vulgarly as a weed, in the crevices of every old wall and 

 on every rocky bank. We realized how well it deserved 

 its old name of "Wall-rue. " It is extraordinarily toler- 

 ant of differences in degree of light, growing, with appar- 

 ently equal satisfaction, on the open roadside and on 

 densely shaded boulders in the woods. In America, it 

 is pretty strictly a lime-loving plant; but according to 

 Dalla Torre and Sarntheim's " Flora von Tirol," it is 

 here also tolerant of chemically different substrata. It 

 is said to occur frequently about Bozen on porphyritic 



