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it was at the foot of the Catskills. It is suggested that it may 
have been established there as an immigrant, the seeds of which 
were brought east mixed with grass seed or perhaps in the great 
quantities of baled hay, food for the horses used in the construc- 
tion of the Ashokan Reservoir and dam, before the days of 
automobile tractors. 
A large and handsome colony of the oak fern, Phegopteris 
Dryopteris, was found at the top of Wagon Wheel Gap, on the 
east slope of High Point, the course of a glacial stream with 
large “fossil” cataracts, which drained the Esopus Valley, when 
the eastern opening was blocked by thick ice. The deeply piled 
rock fragments in this cool, shaded notch keep the winter ice 
from melting until midsummer; and the low temperature, a 
sharp contrast to that outside, was apparently favorable to the 
oak fern, a species common farther north. 
On the way up, a splendid purple display in a grass field east 
of Middletown proved to be the ragged robin, Lychnis Flos- 
cuculli, covering acres, the largest assemblage of the plant I 
ave ever seen. Silene noctiflora was also numerous and con- 
spicuous in the twilight along the roads in western Orange and 
southern Ulster counties. 
Raymonp H. TORREY 
