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infantry in Flanders is characterised by monotony, varied 

 by periods of excitement provided gratis by the Hun, and 

 no condition could bring out more forcibly the value of an 

 enthusiasm, be it for horses, fishing, botany or what not, as 

 a preventive against boredom. To one in whom fern 

 hunting is a hereditary disease, ferns of any sort, anywhere, 

 cannot fail to provide entertainment, although it must be 

 confessed that in Flanders the material is very limited and 

 the results of many months of desultory hunting have been 

 precisely nil, as regards varieties of decorative value. 



Luckily the pleasure of the pursuit is not dependent 

 solely on the discovery of the very occasional ' ' good 

 thing.' ' ' ' Where there are ferns there is always a chance " 

 and at least there are always those forms of minor variation 

 which are interesting botanically, though useless for the 

 garden, to say nothing of the beauty of the normal ferns 

 themselves. 



Polystichums are fairly generally distributed over our 

 Army area, though their numbers are few, and they are all 

 of the extreme aculeatum type, not a single angulare or 

 intermediate form being found, nor any varieties. 



Lastreas are fairly abundant, dilatata, spinulosa and 

 filix-mas especially so. Pseudo-mas is not so common, 

 though it does occur. Montana was not found. 



Polypodium vulgare is plentiful on that curious group of 

 isolated sandy hills which rise abruptly from the plain on 

 the Franco-Belgian borders. Much hunting was done on 

 one of these, formerly a valuable observation post over- 

 looking the old German lines, and still under occasional shell 

 fire from the high-velocity naval gun, vulgarly known as 

 "Percy." A few sub- varieties were found, e.g., semi- 

 lacerum. bifidum and acutum, one of the last, with long 

 tapering pinnae, being almost worth " bagging." 



