-66- 



Miss Catharine M. Bates, of Bedford, N. Y., reports finding 

 the walking fern growing in great abundance on decomposing 

 gneiss and not on limestone. In other sections this fern has been 

 found on sandstone, shale and conglomerate. 



Mr. R. Kent Beattie notes that in the summer of 1896, Os- 

 munda regalis was collected in the Republican river valley near 

 Franklin, Neb. The genus Osmunda is not mentioned in Coul- 

 ter's Manual, and Mr. Beattie adds that this is apparently the 

 first recorded instance of the occurrence of this fern west of the 

 Mississippi river. 



One of the most difficult things to preserve is an equisetum 

 of the sub -order containing arvense, limosum and littorale. Un- 

 less extreme care be taken they discolor. I find they bear no 

 pressure at all. My way is to put them between papers, when 

 they are easily slipped between the driers. I then get on top of 

 the pile to press it down to give the plants shape, then take off 

 all pressure. This gives a fine result, if the pile be not too large. 

 — A. A. Eaton. 



Eaton's "Ferns of North America" mentions Botrychium 

 ternatum as rarely bearing two fertile fronds. I have found 

 about twenty so, variously doubled, and this year found a B. ter- 

 natum obliquum with three fine fertile fronds, the main one 

 forking near the sterile leaf, and the sterile one sending up a fer- 

 tile branch. They are all well developed.— Alvah A. Eaton. 

 [Dr. L. M. Underwood has a specimen of this variety in his col- 

 lection which bears a sterile leaf and three equally well developed 

 fertile fronds which fork just above the juncture of the sterile 

 frond and stem. — Ed.] 



Even so staid a species as we are accustomed to consider the 

 common polypody is not without its changes in other climes, as 

 will be seen from the following note from Sowerby's " Ferns and 

 Fern Allies of Great Britain :" "The size of the fronds varies 

 from six to eighteen inches. When much exposed or at a dis- 

 tance from the ground they have a drooping habit. The fronds 

 of this fern are in perfection from August to November, but are, 

 in exposed situations, disfigured by the first frost. Under shelter 

 it becomes evergreen, retaining the old fronds until the appear- 

 ance of new ones." We who have seen the fronds of this species 

 weathering all temperatures, find it hard to imagine their being 

 hurt by a frost. 



