—99— 



Kentucky I found Asplenium montanum, Adiantum capillus- 

 Veneris, Botrychium dissectum, the climbing fern and many 

 other varieties desirable for my collection, and brought home sev- 

 eral baskets full of live plants. 



At Oakdale, Tenn., on the Emery river, I found two or three 

 specimens of the climbing fern {Lygodium pal??iatu??i) opposite 

 the hotel and kept my eye over my shoulder, fearing that I might 

 be interrupted in the collecting. But afterwards 1 found a bank 

 on the railroad track a couple of miles north of the hotel where 

 they grew by the hundreds. Some were five feet in length, and 

 every handful of moss contained a half-dozen specimens. 



Joliet, 111., Sept. g, \2>qq. 



OUR MISCELLANY. 



Dr. Thomas C. Porter reports the discovery of two stations 

 for Cheilanthes lanosa near Easton, Pa., one on rocks in the 

 neighborhood and the other six miles above at Martin's Creek, 

 where Phegopieris Phegopteris also grows plentif ully. 



Those who have given directions for distinguishing between 

 Botrychium obliquum and B. Virginianum seem to have over- 

 looked the important fact that when \' irginianum is fruiting, ob- 

 liquum has not begun to come up. This is apparently later to 

 develop than any other of our native species. 



In some sections of Pennsylvania mountaineers make use of 

 the early shoots of Pteris aquilina as a vegetable, boiling it as 

 they would asparagus. This is one of the few instances of a fern 

 being used as food. The species is very abundant in ground over 

 which forest fires have passed. — C. F. Saunders. 



This part of my paper would certainly be incomplete did I 

 omit reference to the immense fertility of the fern tribe in the 

 way of spores. Six dead and withered fronds of my original 

 plant of A. f. f. Victor ice yielded me by careful computation 

 80,000,000 of spores still unshed. Any fertile fern of fair size 

 affords a nice sum in multiplication, each capsule containing say 

 fifty spores, each heap several scores of capsules, each pinnule 

 several heaps, each pinna a number of pinnules, each frond a 

 score or so of pinnae, and the plant a fair number of fronds. 

 Multiply all these together and you will have an appalling string 

 of noughts following a very decent figure before you have done. 

 — Charles T. Druery, before the British Pteridological Society. 



