ASPIDIUM FRAGRANS. —SWEET SHIELD-FERN. 8 3 
Parry’s report. One of the more recent discoverers, Mr. C. G. 
Pringle, who saw it growing on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in a 
letter to the writer under date of April 13, 1879, gives so excel- 
lent a description of how the plant appears in its native home 
that we are tempted to quote it here: “In the several stations 
of Aspidium fragrans among the Green Mountains, which I have 
explored, the plant is always seen growing from the crevices or 
on the narrow shelves of dry cliffs—not often such cliffs as are 
exposed to the sunlight, unless it be on the summits of the 
mountains, but usually such cliffs as are shaded by firs, and 
notably such as overhang mountain rivulets and waterfalls. 
When I visit such places in summer, the niches occupied by the 
plants are quite dry. I think it would be fatal to the plant if 
much spray should fall on it during the season of its active 
growth. When you enter the shade and solitude of the haunts 
of this fern its presence is betrayed by its resinous odor: looking 
up the face of the cliff, usually mottled with lichens and moss, 
you see it often far above your reach hanging against the rock, 
masses of dead brown fronds, the accumulations of many years, 
preserved by the resinous principle which pervades them; for 
the fronds as they disport regularly about the elongating caudex, 
fall right and left precisely like a woman’s hair. Above the 
tuft of drooping dead fronds which radiate from the centre of 
the plant, grow from six to twenty green fronds, which represent 
the growth of the season, those of the preceding year dying 
towards autumn.” Its filical companions in this locality are 
Cystopteris fragilis, Polypodium vulgare, and IWoodsia [lvensis. 
The observations of Dr. Parry and Mr. Pringle not only 
interest us in the pen-picture of the home of our sweet-scented 
shield-fern, but will be very useful to those who desire to cul- 
tivate it. It has been under culture in English gardens since 
1820, and is still popular with the hardy fern growers there, not- 
withstanding the influx of new favorites. A writer on hardy 
cultivated ferns in the Gardener's Chronicle for February 8, 1879, 
says it is regarded there as “a charming little species, very sweet- 
