This is the only North American species with ashy spores, 

 though one black or dark brown- spored species, Melanospora, is 

 found. Colored spores are found on several widely separated 

 species. Tasmania gives Gicnnii, Stuarti and Hooker i with 

 glaucous or ashy spores; Australia gives Muelleri with ashy and 

 iripus with fuscous spores. From South America we have 

 Gardneriana, with blackish spores, and from Central Africa 

 Nigrilana and Welwitschii, with glaucous spores. Several 

 other species have spores that are not chalk-white, the usual 

 color. In all cases the color seems to be a pigment secreted in the 

 spore itself, the enveloping silica having the usual white color, 

 and all elevations have a chalky whiteness. When the deposit of 

 silica is thin the spores are dark brown, and ashy when it is 

 thicker. 



Seabrook, N. H. 



DRYOPTERIS SIM UL AT A IN PENNSYLVANIA 



By C. F. Saunders. 



'HE stations for Dryopteris simulaia in Pennsylvania, so far 



as known to the present writer, are not many, and all are in 



the eastern part of the State. Dr. Thomas C. Porter has 

 recorded it from the neighborhood of Pottsville, in Schuylkill 

 county, as also from a swamp near Tannersville, Monroe county, 

 and the herbarium of the Philadelphia Botanical Club is said to 

 contain specimens from Paoli, Chester county. 



In July last another station was added to this list when, in 

 company with Stewardson Brown, of the Philadelphia Academy 

 of Natural Sciences, I had my first sight of this fern in its wild 

 home, growing in great abundance in the muck and twilight of a 

 swampy spruce wood six miles west of Dingmari's Ferry, Pike 

 county. At that season the fruit dots were just appearing, and 

 the fronds that bore them were in some instances not fully un- 

 rolled. In the same locality grew the marsh shield fern {Dryop- 

 teris Thelypteris), the crested shield fern (D. cristata), the spin- 

 ulose shield fern {D. spinulosa intermedia), Boott's shield fern 

 {D. Boottii), the royal fern (Osmunda regalis) , and the cinna- 

 mon fern (0. cinnamomea). It was strikingly different in general 

 aspect from D. Thelypteris, for which it is often mistaken. 

 Some plants of the latter grow side by side with it in the swamp 

 above mentioned, making comparison easy. Especially we noticed 



