AMERICAN FERN Society 15 
in a campaign to have ‘The Fern” legally created the 
state emblem. In spite of many good arguments in its 
favor, this proposition has been opposed by various 
citizens who prefer the mountain laurel, and seems to 
have met defeat in the first encounter, the House of 
Representatives having recently passed a bill naming 
the laurel as the state flower. 
American Fern Society 
Manin, P. I., SepremBer 12, 1914. 
Mr. L. S. Hopkins, 
Curator of Herbarium, 
American Fern Society, 
Kent, Ohio. 
My pear Mr. Horkins: 
The fact that I have never made a contribution to 
the herbarium of the Fern Society has long been a source 
of trouble to my conscience and, as I look over the last 
annual report of the Curator, I come to the conclusion 
that there must be many more members with a troubled 
conscience or else many members without any at all. 
With our large membership it seems to me that it 
would be a very easy matter to build up a good repre- 
sentative collection of the ferns of the United States 
simply by each member going through his duplicates 
and contributing one set and in making collections, to 
add one more for the Society. 
As I am not in the ‘Mother Country,” I cannot help 
along that line, but decided some time ago that “our 
colonies should be represented,’ so I have taken out 
one set of my duplicates and as a result I am sending you, 
under registered mail, 500 specimens as my contribu- 
tion; these are practically all Philippine material, but 
in order to make the set up to an even 500 I had to add 
some odds and ends from China, Japan, and North 
ales. 
