COMMERCIAL FERN GATHERING 89 
vacation in Vermont several years ago. The name 
of the hamlet where he stopped is not given, but ‘‘it is 
delightfully situated in a dilation of a valley of a branch 
of the Deerfield River, some nineteen hundred feet 
above sea level, with encircling summits rising another 
ten hundred feet.” 
“About ten years ago, a shrewd-eyed native of the 
locality saw a fortune in the perennial crop of the spinu- 
lose shield fern’? that grew in the moist woods abun- 
dantly, conceived the idea of marketing the fronds and 
now has become an acknowledged “benefactor of the 
community.” Ordinarily, “picking begins about two 
weeks before Labor Day and lasts about five weeks.” 
“During the height of the picking season some families 
earn as much as ninety dollars a week, clearing some 
five hundred dollars during the season.”’ The men 
gather the ferns from early morning until late at night 
in large hampers which are brought in several times 
during the day to their women for bunching. The 
ferns are bound, in bunches of twenty-five, by a piece 
of thread, each bunch containing an assortment of 
sizes varying from about nine inches to eighteen inches. 
Some men bunch their ferns as they pick; however, 
most of the bunching is done by women or at night. 
Some difficulty is experienced at the beginning, it is 
said, to distinguish the spinulose shield fern from other 
ferns growing with it, but a novice soon becomes pro- 
ficient. An “expert gauges the size and quality of the 
ferns almost by the feeling of their stalks; and, instead 
of gathering them one at a time, his busy fingers take, 
in one operation, all those of the cluster that are of 
proper size. The ferns are not pulled up by the roots, 
but are broken off a few inches below the lowest frond.” 
The dealer and his agents to whom the ferns are deliv- 
ered ship these bunched ferns as far west as Chicago 
and Denver, and the wastage from being kept in cold 
