76 



THE FERN BULLETIN 



Additional Fern Pests. — It certainly does make 

 a difference whose ox is gored! The fern student who 

 finds a big fat grub eating the heart out of some choice 

 specimen is likely to vote it an unmitigated nuisance, 

 but the student of boring larvae would view the prize 

 with delight. It seems that there is still a good deal 

 to be found out about these larvae and the possibility 

 of locating an occasional new species is good. Hie 

 underground parts of many flowering plants are in- 

 fested with such larvae and in most cases they seem 

 to be pretty closely restricted to a single host plant, and 

 do not occur outside the region inhabited by the plant. 

 Among ferns which serve as hosts for borers are the 

 sensitive fern and the brackens. Any fern with a root- 

 stock of some size, however, may be suspected of har- 

 boring these insects, and only last summer Mr. Henry 

 Bird of Rye, N. Y., found an unknown species in the 

 rootstock of the common chain fern (Woodivardia). 

 Mr. Bird is an authority on borers o£<all kinds and will 

 be glad to name specimens sent in. When one finds a 

 grub burrowing in the tissues of a plant, he should cut 

 off sections containing the insect and, enclosing them in 

 some small box, mail to Mr. Bird. The larvae do not 

 seem very destructive to the ferns, but now is a good 

 time to get the pests properly labelled. 



Number of Articles on Ferns. — There is annu- 

 ally published in Germany a summary of all the publi- 

 cations on ferns in the world. The summary, how- 

 ever, lags somewhat and that for 1909 has just ap- 

 peared. Glancing through preceding issues it is inter- 

 esting to observe how the number of articles on ferns 

 varies from year to year. From 1902 to the end of 

 1909 there were over 3C>00 articles published. For the 



