74 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
entomology and mineralogy and to some extent in bot- 
any, but it was not until about thirty years ago, 1876, 
that I began to pay especial attention to botany. 
I commenced with Gray’s “How Plants grow” and 
various books on floriculture. I then bought Wood’s 
“Class Book,” which I gave considerable study. 
About 1879 I renewed my aquaintance with Mr. Edward 
Moulton in whose company I had made many expedi- 
tions in quest of birds and microscopic material in years 
gone by. He had been absent from the city for some 
years, as I had myself. 
I found that he had been giving some attention to 
wild plants and so together we began to make botanical 
excursions into the surrounding towns and continued to 
do so for six or eight years or until he again removed 
from Newburyport. Our expeditions were made usu- 
ally on Sunday and we sought wild plants with a good 
deal of persistency. I remember that one season we 
made botanical excursions on twenty-seven consecutive 
Sundays, collecting and examining plants, both phaeno- 
gams and cryptogams, and as we used the fourth edition 
of the Manual, both musci and hepaticae were included. 
In the mean time we became acquainted with Mr. Al- 
vah A. Eaton of Seabrook, N. H., who was also interested 
in botanical matters and who introduced us to many 
fruitful localities in Salisbury, Seabrook and Hampton. 
During all this period from 1876 to 1892 and indeed 
up to the present time I was making a collection of 
pressed specimens of every plant I considered rare and 
have the collection yet. Many of these pressed speci- 
mens are fern fronds. I did not know the native ferns as 
well twenty-five years ago as I do now, but I was able to 
identify all the commoner species and especially I was 
able to distinguish between [Aspidium] Thelypteris and 
[A.] Noveboracense. 
