56 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
Carlotta C. Hall. Circulars containing a brief outline 
of the history of the Society, its needs, its purposes, and 
its various activities have recently been distributed to 
the members. It is urged that all do their part by 
securing one or more new members each, by bringing 
the Society and its JouRNaL to the attention of local 
nature study clubs, and by urging subscriptions from 
colleges and from public libraries even in smaller towns. 
We could double our membership if we would; and it 
seems well worth while to make the effort, if we are 
interested in fern study in anything more than a passive 
way. 
The whole matter as to the success of the Society or 
the failure to attain its highest aims is determined 
chiefly by personal interest on the part of the members. 
’ Members as a whole care little for descriptions of new 
species. The growing plants are what really interest 
them,—relationship, the kind and degree of fertility, 
the main types of variation, the soil and habitat prefer- 
ences, the local distribution and companion plants of a 
given species, and the like; but these fields are not 
well covered. Much scattered information can be 
found, no doubt, upon the sequence of the development 
of the ferns in spring, but we do not know whether the 
order of appearance noted in a single locality is true for 
a wide region. Would it not be worth while for 25 
members to publish sequence lists for their respective 
localities, noting departures from year to year? Which 
fern of the eastern United States is the earliest in start- 
ing? Do most of the species which start first bring 
their spores to maturity first? Have we, as a matter 
of fact, followed most of our species through the season? 
There is not a fern of the United States, which, if the 
data can be got together from an intensely interested 
membership, is worth less than a full number of the 
JOURNAL, in spite of all that has been written of it in 
