96 American Fern Journal 



Fifty feet from the foot of the ledge, however, began a 

 dense growth of white cedar through which one had to 

 push by main force, and as the rocks of the talus were 

 heavily moss-covered, and rotting logs were everywhere, 

 traveling was several degrees harder than walking down 

 stairs. 



I came that afternoon to the top of that ledge in a 

 particular hurry. My wheel was at the foot of the slope 

 and I had then several miles of hilly road to supper. 

 There happened to be a break in the ledge at that par- 

 ticular point and I climbed down that and was perhaps 

 twenty feet down the open part of the talus when I 

 stopped, no longer in a hurry. There was a plant of hart's 

 tongue with its leaves pushing up perpendicularly 

 from the slope of forty-five degrees. The roots were 

 a pocket of soil covered by fragments of the limestone 

 which is very loose at the top of such a talus and furn- 

 ishes insecure footing. Before I went home I had seen 

 probably forty plants of the fern. Afterwards, on 

 later trips I found stations containing two or three 

 times as many plants. Always they occurred in sim- 

 ilar situations, near the top of a steep talus, with a ledge 

 above, and a dense shrubby growth below which served 

 as an admirable protection from the ordinary tramper. 

 One exception may be noted where a few stunted plants 

 were found at the top of a ledge on the sides of crevices 

 several feet deep. I found the last mentioned station in 

 a snow storm in weather too cold to allow an ordinary 

 camera shutter to work properly. 



The plant illustrated grew in a station not far from 

 the first one found. The picture which was taken 

 about the middle of June, shows the evergreen last 

 year's leaves sloping down the face of the rock by which 

 this particular plant grew. In the lower right corner 

 of the picture is- a leaf of Cyxtopteri* bulbifem which 

 luxuriate^ even-where along the talus with leaves two 



