~ 
FERN-HUNTING IN PANAMA 5 
quete at the foot of the Divide, and the other several 
miles over the Divide on the Atlantic side—are in a 
state of complete ruin. A new camp has, however, 
recently been built a couple of miles south of the earlier 
Camp I, and this we made our headquarters. To 
avoid confusion, I have called this new camp Camp A, 
designating the site of the earlier one as Camp I.* 
As I had “combed over” quite thoroughly the region 
in the vicinity of Camp A on previous trips, our entire 
time was now spent north of Camp I. My guide 
opened up a hunting trail, long disused, leading from 
Camp I to the top of the Cordillera, extending along 
this a few miles to the east (with a view of the Pacific 
on the right and the Atlantic on the left), and then 
descending the north side a short distance. At every 
few feet of ascent a brand new lot of ferns would appear. 
My guide would open up my press while I would walk 
about within a radius of a few yards and gather a 
generous number of specimens of each species. As soon 
as we had amassed a sufficiently large bundle, we would 
tie it up and leave it by the trail to be picked up on 
the return trip. ..The accompanying photograph shows 
my guides in. the densest part of this jungle. 
The intensely” humid character of this, portion of the 
forest is almost beyond description. The whole atmos- 
phere was Wét-and clammy and bubbles of yellowish 
water were slowly collecting and dripping off the - 
of the ferns. ‘The tree-trunks were covered with m 
and masses of filmy ferns, all as saturated as the iad 
sponge. 
After spending two days in this portion of the Cor- 
dillera, we followed Holcomb’s trail itself to its summit 
and down the Atlantic side for three or four miles. 
* The localities along Holcomb’s Trail have been discussed melanie on 
Mr. Maxon in a paper entitled, ‘ ie — at oe from Pana 
Smiths. Misc. Coll., Vol. 56, No. 24, pp. 1-5, pls. » Nov. 22, seth: 
