THE OSMUNDAS. 29 
The Osmundas, like other large ferns, are commonly 
called brakes. The name, however, more properly be- 
longs to the bracken which can show cause for bearing 
it. In some of the Eastern States they are also known 
as hog-brakes, the qualifying word given, apparently to 
indicate their superior size, just as the words dog, horse 
and bull are applied to other plants. Occasionally they 
are called snake-brakes, popular opinion ever associating 
ferns and serpents. Nothing, however, can better show 
how unfounded is. the belief in connection with this 
species than the fact that the Wilson’s thrush and the 
brown thrasher are fond of choosing a clump of it for 
a nesting-site, often building in the centre of the green 
vase. It is doubtless this species that is coupled with 
the serpent in the old rhyme 
“ Break the first brake you see, 
Kill the first snake you see, 
And you will conquer every enemy.” 
In the Old World it was once believed that biting the 
first fronds seen in spring would insure one against the 
toothache for a year. Our earliest species appear to lack 
such desirable properties. 
Occasionally in a clump of this species one may 
chance upon a frond that is half-way between fertile and 
sterile. This is the form /froudosa. It is seldom twice 
alike. The fertile portion may be at the apex, base or 
in the middle, or scattered about the frond. It may be 
common in a locality one season and rare the next. Itis 
apparently caused by some injury to the rootstock which 
obliges the plant to turn the partly formed fertile fronds 
into organs of assimilation and is of special interest to 
the botanist for the relation it shows to exist between . 
the two sorts of fronds. 
