Notes AND NEws 57 
Although a number of American florists have culti- 
vated the hart’s-tongue fern, there has been doubt 
whether any of their stock was derived from native 
American plants. We know now that there will soon 
be one undoubted American strain on the market. At 
the time of the Society’s field meeting last summer, 
fruiting fronds of the hart’s-tongue were sent from 
Jamesville, N. Y. to A. M. Davenport, Watertown, 
Mass., and from their spores he now has five or six 
hundred plants in the prothallial stage or showing the 
first leaf. 
QUERIES AND HINTS FOR THE FERN Boys AND GIRLS, 
by an old-fashioned fern-lover. 
What is the rarest world fern? Is it Asplenium 
Seelosii? “The rarest, most circumscribed of any known 
European fern. Only in the Dolomites of South Tyrol.” 
(Hooker.) Or is it Aspidium haleakalense? “Halfway 
up the voleano, Hawaii. Nowhere else in the world.” 
(Hitcheock.) 3 
What is the rarest New England fern? Is it Aspidium 
fragrans? Who knows it well? Who appreciates it 
fairly? Who has succeeded in cultivating it? With 
what food? In what circumstances? What are its 
relatives? Has any other plant its peculiar perfume? 
When is that perfume at its best? (I gathered it once 
when it was delicious and it lasted for weeks.) Has any 
other fern its viscidity? Is it not more like the Woodsias 
than the Aspidiums? What are its ancestors? 
Who is studying fossil ferns? 
J. A. BATES. 
A FOSSIL FERN FREAK. In a collection of fossils from 
Alaska assigned to Dr. Hollick of the New York Botani- 
cal Garden for study there was found an impression of a 
. 
