124 FERNS OF KENTUCKY. 
“My second view of the Trichomanes I can never forget. 
At a point where the immense cliff seemed to have sud- 
denly parted, forming an angle of forty-five degrees, a 
small stream of water was falling from the top, a distance 
of about two hundred feet. In this angle, twenty feet 
above my head, was a fairy grotto about three feet deep 
and ten feet in circumference. It was lined above, be- 
low, and within with Trichomanes glistening in the spray 
of the falling water, many of the leaves eight inches long— 
a translucent fringe—deeply embowered in the shade of 
the overhanging cliffs and rhododendrons, where no ray 
of sunshine had ever penetrated. The face of the cliff 
is about three hundred yards from the river, and the point 
where the plant grows is pure sandstone. ‘These cliffs are 
the crowns to hills covered with great varieties of foliage, 
and the glens which lead up the middle of these arcades 
are filled with the rankest vegetation. The cliffs here form 
arcades from the banks of the river, which run from north 
to south.” 
In the summer of 1877 Dr. Crosier, of Louisville, found 
it on the divide between the head waters of the Rockcastle 
River and the South Fork of the Kentucky River.: It 
grew beneath an overhanging ledge of sandstone, where 
the rays of the sun never penetrated, and where it was 
kept constantly moist with water trickling from above. 
One of the Liverworts (Marchantia) was found growing 
with it in great abundance. ‘The rocks overhead were 
fringed with rhododendrons. 
Prof. Hussey, who first identified Dr. Hill’s specimens, 
and who has made himself familiar with it in its native 
habitats, has kindly sent me the following account of it: 
“The thin, wiry root-stocks, densely clothed with roots or 
trichomes, are woven into a dense mat and come off in 
