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have always turned out to be the variety adpressum — or 

 chapmani, if you prefer the new name. The editor was 

 first to report the typical alopeciiroides from Long Island, 

 having found it at Babylon, seven years ago. Jelliffe's 

 Flora records it from several other places. 



It is well known that the fertile parts of fern fronds 

 usually perish soon after the spores are shed. So uni- 

 versal is this habit that there is probably no species of 

 fern in the world in which the fertile frond outlasts the 

 sterile one, unless it be the so-called sensitive fern. It 

 would be interesting to investigate all our ferns with 

 reference to this habit. There is a wide range of dates 

 at which the fertile fronds fall, from those of the cinna- 

 mon fern in early spring to those of the sensitive fern, 

 which do not disappear until the following year. The 

 life of the sensitive fern's fertile frond, however, is much 

 shorter. It is only because of the woody nature of the 

 stipe that it stands erect through the winter. In the case 

 of the small rock ferns, it has been often intimated that 

 the fertile fronds of maiden-hair spleenwort do not last 

 through the winter, but Mr. W. A. Poyser of Philadel- 

 phia sends fertile fronds collected during the first week 

 of April that appear quite as vigorous as any to be found 

 in autumn. 



Mr. Amedee F. Hans, on the Palmer Estate, Stam- 

 ford, Conn., has a large collection of living ferns, and 

 is much of an experimenter. In a letter to Mr. Ferriss 

 concerning his experiments w T ith spores, he writes : " Do 

 you collect abnormal ferns? When you are once in it, it 

 will give you many pleasing surprises. There is a limit 

 in the growing of species, but there is none in the forms. 

 There is a great difference in the seedlings. I find that 

 the prothalium growing from spores taken from the mid- 

 dle part of the frond are generally normal and more vig- 

 orous, and interfere with the growing of those taken 

 from the spores from affected or abnormal parts of the 

 frond ; therefore the result of the operation will be a 



