THE PREVENTION OF THE WILD 119 
Growing with the Selaginella are the largest plants of 
Cheilanthes lanosa I have seen. In January, 1891, our 
high school “Chapter” of the Agassiz Society took a 
tramp (nobody ‘‘hiked”’ in those days) of twenty miles 
or so and found the dead fronds. Not for ten years or 
more was the fern found in two other places miles away. 
After all this gloomy writing I feel but little better, 
even though I know that it is not my fault that all of 
these things have happened. If there is any moral at 
all to this, it is that we should think at least twice be- 
fore we destroy a rare plant by collecting it in quantity. 
The Society should have for one of its objects the pro- 
tection of our ferns. By giving too much encourage- 
ment to collecting and exchanging it can too easily be- 
come a Society for the Prevention of the Wild. 
Wasuinoeton, D. C. 
ASPLENIUM GRAVESII In PENNSYLVANIA.—While en- 
gaged in the study of the soil reactions of rock ferns the 
writer went through the herbarium of Mr. Harold W. 
Pretz of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to obtain data on 
rare species there included. Among specimens of As- 
plenium pinnatifidum which had been collected in a ra- 
vine along the lower Susquehanna River, just below 
Fites Eddy, Lancaster County, Pa., on August 31 , 1918, 
there were found to be several showing a gradation in 
their features toward A. Bradleyi. They appeared to 
correspond to the description of the hybrid between these 
two species named A. gravesii by Mr. W. . Maxon 
about two years ago'; and on comparison with the type 
of the latter plant in the National Herbarium, complete 
identity was established. 
The sheets of Asplenium pinnatifidum and A. Brad- 
leyi from the lower Susquehanna region in the herbarium 
i 
*Am. Fern Journ. 8: 1. 1918. 
