WHERE OPHIOGLOSSUM GROWS 43 
to turn to Eaton’s pages and see what he has to say on 
the same species. Very often it will be found that he 
had already recorded facts of which the latter student 
had believed himself to be the discoverer. His com- 
ment on the present subject is as follows: 
“‘Hab.—Commonest in low meadows, but some- 
. times on dry hillsides.” (Page 261.) . . . “The 
height varies from two to three inches on dry hillsides 
to over a foot on damp grassy meadows.” (Page 262.) 
In connection with my call for information, I find I 
made a considerable mistake in quoting a correspondent 
as having written that Ophioglossum grows in pine bar- 
rens in New Jersey. “It is distinctly,’ I am quoting 
exactly now, “a plant of the middle district and the 
coast, very different life-areas from the pine-barrens.” 
Besides his statement of the localities where he has 
found Ophioglossum himself, Mr. Weatherby has an 
interesting suggestion to offer as partial explanation of 
the fact that this fern is to be found both on dry land 
and in wet meadows, which I print here as introductory 
to the whole discussion. ‘‘May it not be that Ophi- 
oglossum, like some other species, frequents dry situa- 
tions in one part, and probably the northern part, of its 
range, and moist ones in other regions?” 
R. C. BENEDICT. 
I have two sheets of Ophioglossum. One was col- 
lected at Barkhamsted, Conn., in moist places in a 
typical pasture, and I should say where it was shaded 
by bushes somewhat. The other, South Windsor, 
Conn., was in an open grassy meadow, near but not in 
a sphagnous bog in which Arethusa and pitcher plant 
grew. I have also found it in the low moist part of an 
open meadow in Bloomfield, Conn. In this case it 
grew near a drainage ditch, in ground which may very 
likely have been covered with water in early spring. 
