148 THE WOOD FERNS. 
cept by some sort of a ladder. But it was so unlike 
any other species with its dry, curling, snuff-coloured 
fronds of last year, that I knew it was the one I wanted. 
Its chief characteristics are, first, that peculiar ap- 
pearance of the old fronds: you couldn't curl them 
more gracefully than they 
, appear drooping over the 
edge of the rocks; second, 
the glutinous fronds—grass 
and leaves adhere to them; 
third, its peculiar fragrance. 
Gray says aromatic; that doesn't half tell the story. I 
gathered a clump of it on the cliff and dropped it down 
in my pocket handkerchief and the perfume lasted for 
days. I think it is like new mown hay composed largely 
of sweetbriar rose leaves. It grows on the dryish cliff 
sides where anything else would be scorched by the 
sun’s heat. Look for a place where there is a bare cliff, 
overhanging, a little, perhaps, so that the rain cannot 
reach it and up above all the trees so that it can have 
no shade at all, and if you find a fern there, test it by its 
fragrance, its stickiness and its beautiful brown curls.” 
The fragrance has also been likened to that of primroses, 
strawberries and raspberries and the plant is known 
sometimes as the sweet polypody. 
The greater part of the fragrant fern’s range is north 
of the United States. It has been found ina few ele- 
vated stations in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, 
New York, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Northward it 
extends to Alaska and Greenland and is reported to be 
the commonest species in some districts. It is found 
also in Northern Europe and Asia and is there occasion- 
ally used as a tea, being valued as an anti-scorbutic. Al- 
A Fruiting Pinna. 
