16 



THE FERN BULLETIN 



after huckleberries and finally got lost in a part of the 

 swamp I had never entered before. Here I discovered 

 a fern which looked from where I was to be the cin- 

 namon fern, but as soon as I came near to it I saw 

 at once it was something I had not seen before and 

 turning one of the fronds over told me what I had 

 found — which only makes good the statement that we 

 find a specimen when we are looking for something 

 else. I have jalso ifound specimens of Equisetum 

 scirpoides growing in the moss and among fronds of 

 Cystopteris bulbifera on a deeply wooded hillside 

 where a tiny stream trickled down from the top of 

 the hill. In all I have found so far twenty-four 

 varieties of ferns and four varieties of scouring rushes 

 and horsetails. — Mrs. George B. Ayers, West Bloom- 

 field, New York. 



Wood Ferns Grouped Anew.— Anybody who 

 dabbles much in ferns finally arrives at a point where 

 he figures out a scheme for breaking up the great 

 group of wood ferns, of which, in the widest sense 

 there are not far from two thousand species, into 

 smaller groups that shall more nearly express relation- 

 ship. The British have ever recognized the desira- 

 bility of this and in their own fern flora though they 

 may list them all as Nephrodiums they retain the sec- 

 tion names for them, as Lastrea and Polystichum. 

 Long before we were willing to separate our Poly- 

 stichums as a separate genus, the British had done 

 so. But while it may be well enough to break up the 

 wood fern group, fern-students have never agreed as 

 to how it should be done. At least a dozen years ago, 

 B. D. Gilbert suggested in a paper presented at the 

 Boston meeting of fern students, that the group should 

 be divided largely according to habits of growth and 



