48 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
species which come very close to it. I have written an 
article for the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanica] Club, 
which I expect to print in December with illustrations.” 
The following summer I carefully collected a series 
of specimens for Mrs. Britton; and after my return to 
the University of Michigan received the following letter 
(in part) from her: ‘‘The packet of Ophioglossum is here 
safely, and I am much obliged. You certainly have 
found some very interesting intergrading forms, which 
go far to show that O. arenarium is only a starved form 
of O. vulgatum, but my seaside specimens still keep a 
character of their own which I have not seen matched 
by any inland forms of O. vulgatum. The nearest I 
have seen were some collected by Mr. A. A. Eaton at 
Seabrook, N. H., which he showed at the meeting of 
the Linnaean Fern Chapter in Boston in August.” 
During the year 1896, I found the adder’s-tongue fern 
in several rather widely separated localities within a 
radius of three miles of the house; and almost always 
in old “hummocky”’ pastures where considerable mouse- 
ear plantain, Antennaria; Carex pennsylvanica, and some- 
times reindeer moss, Cladonia, grew. Once I found it 
in a cut-over upland meadow. In another locality a 
few plants were found in a tiny desiccated hollow in a 
thick woods of beech and sugar maple, in heavy clay 
soil, and in a sedgy swale, composed largely of Carer 
riparia and Carex stricta, surrounded by hard clay soil, 
near one of our larger creeks, several fine tall fruiting 
plants were found. The 27th of June, 1898, I note 
that plants growing in dry loamy pastures “vary from 
a few inches to nearly a foot in height. One or two or 
even three plants arising from a single root and all 
fruiting. Particularly more than one plant when the 
plants are crowded.” I do not recall of ever finding 
the plant but once in a bog where Sphagnum grew, the 
3 November, 1900, when two small pate ‘pe were 
