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ery of very wonderful varieties, also "as nature made them " — 

 since they are found wild — and the next step usually, since these 

 varieties (which no one acquainted with them accounts as "mon- 

 strosities " ) are much more beautiful in most cases than the nor- 

 mal, was their cultivation and propagation. This has since resulted 

 in more advanced types, but indubitably the very finest, with few 

 exceptions, are nature's handiwork and just as unsophisticated as 

 the commonest. Here we have had sixty years, at least, of devel- 

 opment of fern taste and I should be very much surprised if you do 

 not find that sooner or later the varietal branch will grow on your 

 side as it has on ours. Wait until one of your members lights upon 

 a parallel to Asplenium Felix-fcemina Victoria on one of your lake- 

 sides and see then whether his interest in ferns "as nature makes 

 them," will not be immensely enhanced ; dub his find a "monstros- 

 ity " and see what he will say to you, and then calling your mem- 

 bers together and "comparing forms as nature made them" see 

 what their verdict will be as regards comparative beauty. Did we 

 owe our collections to long continued breeding from slight natural 

 variations, then indeed our taste might be challenged, but when the 

 best of our types, plumose, crested or merely curious, are of na- 

 ture's own fashioning, cropping up in some inscrutable way, usu- 

 ally as solitary specimens, among their common fellows, surely 

 the student "has not the best of it" who shuts out the possibility 

 of their discovery from the scope of his hobby. Out of the latest 

 published list of over 1,800 distinct forms, no less than 1,100 were 

 found in a perfectly wild state and in such localities as to remove 

 the slightest suspicion of their being strays from collections apart 

 from the evidence afforded by their distinctness. — Chas. T. Dru- 

 ery, F. L. S., V. M. H., n Shaw Road, Acton, London, IV., Eng. 



Cheilanthes lanosa, 



I have not found this fern except in one place — Torbits, Ches- 

 ter county, S. C. It is not an easy place to reach, as it is back 

 from the county roads on what is here called a "neighborhood'' 

 road. It is about seven miles east of Chester, on Rocky Creek. 

 Where the road crosses the creek there used to be a grist-mill, the 

 remains of which are still to be seen. Going down the stream a 

 few rods from here, and on the left bank, the Cheilanthes is found 

 in abundance. It grows mostly on rocks where there is but little 

 earth, and that seems to be held in place largely by the roots of 

 this fern. It is on a steep hillside and but a few feet above the 

 water. — H. A. Green, Chester, S. C. 



