4* 



developed into something familiar, but which I could 

 not identify at the time, were carefully packed in a tin 

 box, together with some excellent roots of Aspienium 

 septentvionak and A, gevmanicum. But, alas! the tin was 

 lost, along with my macintosh, on the border between 

 Bulgaria and Roumania. Trie waterproof was a small 

 loss compared with the plants ! 



That old Monastery wall was a puzzle to me. The 

 Monastery itself was some six hundred years old, and 

 the particular wall referred to must have been in a 

 crumbling condition for the last hundred years. The 

 other walls were bone dry ; this one was quite damp, 

 though where the water came from I could not discover. 

 It was wet above the limit of my reach. The peculiar 

 thing is that though one would say it was an obvious 

 place for ferns to have been growing for the last century, 

 yet all the plants growing there were mere youngsters. 

 None could have been more than three or four years old. 

 There were no remains of old ferns. One has to suppose 

 either that the plants are all pulled off at intervals, and 

 that new ones keep cropping up — an unlikely theory — or 

 that the dampness has only been recently acquired, 

 and that previously the old wall was less suitable for 

 fern growth. 



Except for one or two possible plants on the old wall, 

 which were too young to be identified, I found nothing 

 that I could not state with reasonable assurance to be 

 44 British. " But, as stated before, Serbia is a big country, 

 and one's hunting was restricted. I cannot say that any 

 particular species is not to ba found. Given time and 

 opportunity, one would doubtless have found others. 

 But sufficient was seen to convince one that the great 

 majority of the ferns of Northern Serbia are those which 

 are also found in Britain. 



S. P. Rowlands. 



