EDITORIAL. 



There are not a few of us who vainly imagine that 

 FUTURE when we have learned the name of a fern and 

 fern STUDY pressed some specimens of it, that we have got 



pretty much all of interest that the species has to 

 offer. This opinion has long prevailed. Reference to any serial 

 publication devoted to botany will show that our fern students 

 and collectors have mainly been employed in making lists of ferns, 

 rather than in studying the plants themselves. It seems only by 

 the merest chance that anything interesting has slipped into print. 

 To find a rare fern in one's own locality has counted for more in 

 the fern lover's estimation than to discover a dozen curious facts 

 about a common fern. It is probable that more energy has been 

 spent in searching for the walking fern or the smaller Aspieniums 

 than would have sufficed to bring to light many interesting things 

 in our familiar species. And yet it is this latter kind of study 

 that has brought us the most valuable results. Apospory was 

 first discovered in the common Asplenium Filix-fcrmma, and 

 apogamy in Pteris. It was also this same close study of common 

 ferns that brought to light Dryopteris simulata, which until a 

 few years ago had been overlooked and trampled under foot in 

 the hunt for rarities. Let the fern-lover who has been inclined to 

 consider his locality exhausted of new things, turn his attention 

 to a closer inspection of the nearest species, and he will find the 

 field for original work limitless. The discovery of new species of 

 ferns in America is practically at an end; the study of the ferns 

 as living things is just beginning. To learn the names of the ferns 

 is merely to become familiar with the alphabet of fern study. 



* * 



The message of Spring comes early to the ferns. 

 THE He who would see the first frond unroll must not 

 FIRST FROND wait for the woolly "fiddle-heads" of the cinna- 

 mon fern in the plashy pastures. In mid-winter 

 the fronds of some species begin to grow. Last January we saw 

 a half-developed frond of the ebony spleen wort on a bank near the 

 city of Washington, and asked if that were the usual thing, but we 

 venture to say that there are very few who could have enlightened 

 us. Who can say without further examination which species in 

 his locality is first to start into growth in spring and which one 



