76 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
vertical faces of the cliffs, together with Thuidium and 
other mosses. Whether the profusion of ferns was due 
primarily to the limestone, or to the shade and humus, 
the protection from wind and extremes of heat and cold, 
or the exemption from fire! afforded by the river-swamp, 
the rough topography, and the damp humus, is still an 
open question. Weather stations in the vicinity report 
some frost every winter, but the interior of the forest 
is of course better protected. I was not equipped for 
collecting specimens, not expecting to get back to head- 
quarters for ten days or so, but my companions sent 
living material of some of the prettiest ferns by express 
to their homes in Tallahassee, and some of them were 
still growing when I left Florida in the fall. 
We soon located the probable spot where “a slender 
sapling” saved Mr. Curtiss from serious injury, the sap- 
ling of 1897 being in 1915 a box-elder tree about eight 
inches in diameter. During the few hours we were there 
I met with an accident a little different from any de- 
scribed by previous explorers, but due in all probability 
to the same cause as most of them, namely, the softness 
of the limestone. I had stepped out on a projecting 
ledge to reach for the branches of a tree, when without 
warning a piece of rock weighing perhaps 200 pounds 
broke off under my weight and precipitated me into a 
pool of water six or eight feet below. Fortunately 
the water was only about a foot deep, I kept my balance 
(and did not even get my camera wet), and the rock did 
not roll over on me (as may have happened to the 
prominent citizen mentioned by Curtiss), so that no — 
damage was done. 
The latest contribution to the literature about this 
place is a short article by Mrs. Noble on “Fern hunting 
in the phosphate country,” in the June number of this 
1 
Rh only ferns known to the writer which grow in places frequently 
Ovel are the species of Osmunda, Anchistea and Pteridium. 
