103 



erosion in stream beds, entering either a shallow estuary or a 

 broad, swampy valley, in which the Triassic red sandstone was 

 laid down, carried stream gravel into pockets in which it was 

 compressed into conglomerate beds, such as this in the gorge, 

 of Firey Brook, including among the pebbles, the basalt and 

 sandstone. These beds escaped the great downthrow of the L(jgan 

 Line. Farther north along the Ramapo River and Mahwah 

 Creek, in Rockland County, New York, are conglomerate beds 

 with limestone and granite pebbles, and at Stony Point is a bed 

 along the same fault line, with limestone pebbles only in a red 

 sandstone matrix, the basalt and granite being absent. At 

 the Firey Brook conglomerate bed, limestone makes up at least 

 one third of the material in the formation and this limestone 

 evidently was hospitable to the usually lime loving Walking 

 Fern. Here again the wonder is how the spores of the fern found 

 a home in this glen, far from their occurrence on limestone 

 ledges northward. Walking Fern has not been reported on the 

 other limestone conglomerate along the fault line to the Hud- 

 son. 



The excursion on August 5, primarih- for a visit to the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History station for the Study of in- 

 sects, near Southfields, N. Y., included an unexpected pleasure, 

 a swim in the cool, spring fed waters of Spruce Pond, which was 

 grateful on a day with the temperature approaching the nine- 

 ties. The Brooklyn Boy Scouts have been gi^•en the use of 

 this place, for a leanto camp group, by the Palisades Inter- 

 state Park Commission, and their leader, Archibald T. Shorey, 

 an enthusiastic amateur botanist, welcomed the party with hospi- 

 tality in the form of cold lemonade, and the use of a boat, in 

 which the shores of the little bog-lined tarn w^ere comfortably 

 examined. This little pond, high up on Wildcat Mountain, is 

 quite unsuspected from the busy Ramapo Valley motor high- 

 way. Its plant associations are very interesting. Its name is 

 from a small, scattered stand of red spruce, one of the most 

 southern at such an altitude. There is also considerable American 

 larch or tamarack, likewise an extreme southern stand in the 

 east. Around the boggy shores the Virginia chain fern is abun- 

 dant, with Cassandra, Andromeda polifolia, Drosera rotiindi- 

 folia, Calla paliistris, Pitcher Plant and other bog loving 

 species. Mr. Shorey reported Pogonia ophiglossoides and 



