Tur CiLimMBiInc FERN NEAR HARTFORD 113 
the representative in charge of the bill was based on the 
rarity of the plant and the destruction of it being 
wrought. Conservation of wild life, then, was at least 
one of the real objects of the law; and the legislature 
was sufficiently in earnest to provide a jail penalty as 
well as a fine for infractions of it. 
How strictly the law was enforced and whether any 
convictions were actually obtained under it, I do not 
know. But it must have provided the owners of land 
on which the fern grew with a better weapon than the 
general trespass laws could offer; and it doubtless 
hastened the death of the fashion. Certainly the fern, 
to a considerable extent, came back. Ten years ago 
it was still possible to see great tangles of it beside the 
main road from East Windsor Hill to Wapping; and I 
have watched a new colony appear and establish itself 
in a clearing. But what fashion failed to do, tillage 
is doing. The principal crop hereabouts is tobacco, 
and tobacco flourishes best in the kind of soil which 
Lygodium prefers. Moreover, though a laborious and 
somewhat risky crop to raise, it brings in a good profit 
when successful and more and more land is being de- 
voted to it each year. So it happens that there is no 
more climbing fern on the Wapping road; and the axe 
and the plough draw nearer each season to the one 
large station still known to the writer in the South 
Windsor sand-plains. This cannot be prevented: pie 
cannot, and ought not to, stop the clearing of land suit- 
able for tillage. Lygodium may continue to eke out 
& precarious existence in nooks and corners for many 
years to come: but only by setting aside as a sanctuary 
some area small enough not to be missed by the farmer, 
where it can grow undisturbed, can its continued exist- 
ence in any quantity be assured. 
East Hartrorp, CONN. 
