inner circle of the fern's crown of fronds. This method of growth 

 may throw some light upon the origin of the frondosa form of 0. 

 cinnamoinea. No one doubts that frondosa is simply an inter- 

 mediate form between fertile and sterile fronds similar to the 

 variety obtusilobata of Onoclea se?isibilis. Picking off the sterile 

 fronds of this fern will often so decrease the plant's vitality that 

 it is forced to turn the fertile fronds, already partly formed, into 

 organs of assimilation, and this form is the result. But in the 

 cinnamon ferns, since the fertile fronds come first, picking off the 

 sterile fronds is likely to have no other effect than to cause the 

 whole plant to be sterile the following year. It appears that the 

 fertile fronds are found very late in the year, for if the fronds are 

 cut off in summer, the plant is able to produce a new set of sterile 

 ones. To produce the variety fro?idosa, therefore, some cause 

 which would lower the fern's vitality after the fronds for the next 

 year are partially formed, would seem to be needed, and the 

 theory that finds this cause in a fire burning over their haunts in 

 late autumn is likely to be the correct one. — W. N. C. 



THE TENNESSEE LOCALITY FOR THE HART'S-TONGUE 



FERN. 



'HE last week in July I made a trip from Chattanooga to 



South Pittsburg in search of the locality for Scolopendrium, 



described to John Williamson by his correspondent, and 

 narrated in the Torrey Bulletin about 1880. South Pittsburg is 

 just a dollar's worth from Chattanooga by rail, a thriving manu- 

 facturing town at the foot of the Cumberland mountains near the 

 Tennessee river. With the aid of a small boy, I found the local- 

 ity described about two miles southwest of the city, where a 

 spring branch empties into a fissure, cave or well in the limestone, 

 about sixty feet in depth. 



There is a similar cavern near by, called the Devil's Den, 

 which I also visited. A family lives between the two, no more than 

 200 yards from each, and these, they told me, were all the caverns 

 of that nature in the vicinity. I found the poles left in the cav- 

 erns, probably by Mr. Williamson's correspondent, and I found the 

 walking fern and many other varieties, but nothing of Scolopen- 

 drium. In this locality 1 found Cheilanthes Alabamensis and 

 Asfilenium ftinnatifidum. In other localities of Tennessee and 



By James H. Ferriss. 



