152 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



This is the only station for it ever discovered in 

 Massachusetts, and after her report our leading 

 botanist spent days on his hands and knees crawl- 

 ing over Bartholomew's Cobble, looking for more. 



Perhaps you are not excited at the prospect of 

 discovering a hybrid between the Camptosorus and 

 the Asplenium platyneuron? To be quite frank, I 

 am not incapacitated myself. But that is simply 

 because ferns are not my hobby. If they were, 

 this rare hybrid on Bartholomew's Cobble would 

 no doubt affect me as a hitherto unrecorded first 

 folio would affect a bibliophile, or the discovery of 

 a mahogany highboy in an old barn would act upon 

 the collector of Colonial antiques. At any rate, 

 I can appreciate the rare and odd beauty of the 

 setting, the effect of trimmed lawns wandering 

 among the gray rocks and the pines, with open 

 vistas of the curving river, the meadows beyond, 

 the distant dome of the mountain. 



For one to whom ferns are something of a mys- 

 tery, almost any spot on the ledge of the mountain 

 where it makes its first leap up from the pastures 

 along my road will prove an alluring garden. Here 

 the purple cliff -brake (Pellcea atropurpurea), rare 

 only in regions where limestone is rare, but conse- 

 quently unfamiliar to many people, raises its dark 

 little fronds on their black, hairlike stems, and 

 there are many other ferns besides, from exquisite 

 toys, hardly two inches long, in mossy niches, to 

 swaying maidenhair and tall, evergreen ferns. Here, 

 in spring, the early saxifrage puts up its white 

 clusters from the clumps of moss, delicate hare- 

 bell plants sway out from the cliff side crannies, and 



