PTERIDOPHYTA HALCONENSES: A LIST OF THE FERNS 
AND FERN-ALLIES COLLECTED BY ELMER D. MER- 
RILL ON MOUNT HALCON, MINDORO. 
By Edwin Bingham Copeland. 
(From the Bureau of Education, Manila.) 
Mount Halcon is probably third in height among Philippine mountains, 
being nearly 2, 700 meters in altitude and, so far as known, surpassed only 
by Mount Apo and Mount Malindang, both in Mindanao. The trip on 
which the ferns enumerated below were collected was undoubtedly the 
first conquest, by white men, of the highest peak. It was undertaken by 
the order of and with the support of Major-General Leonard Wood, by 
Major Edgar A. M earns. Surgeon, United States Army, accompanied by 
Elmer D. Merrill, botanist of the Bureau of Science, and W. I. Hutchinson, 
of the Forestry Bureau. All the botanical material was collected by 
Mr. Merrill, 759 numbers being secured, representing about 700 dif- 
ferent species, of which 206 species and varieties were ferns and fern- 
allies. 
Previous collections have been made since the American occupation 
of the Philippines by Merrill in 1903 and 1905 on the Baco River at the 
north base of Halcon, and by B. C. McGregor at the same place in 1905. 
In June, 1906, Mr. M. L. Merritt of the Forestry Bureau ascended the 
mountain to an altitude of about 2,100 meters, making a small but very 
interesting botanical collection. In 1895 John Whitehead, an English 
naturalist, made a small botanical collection on Mount Dulangan, a spur 
of Halcon reaching an altitude of 1,800 meters, and between the years 
1836 and 1840 Hugh Cuming, also an Englishman, collected in Mindoro, 
undoubtedly on the Baco River. 
The party on this trip left the coast at Subaan, about 10 miles north 
of Calapan, and followed a general southerly direction. Crossing a 
broad, interrupted, forested ridge of an altitude of about 300 meters, the 
Binabay River, a tributary of the Alag, was reached, and after traversing 
a narrower and slightly higher ridge, the Alag itself, a tributary of 
the Baco, was crossed at an altitude of about 70 m. This river was 
ascended to an altitude of about 300 meters, and again crossed above at an 
altitude of 400 meters after which, by a succession of more or less 
119 
