FERNS OF NORTH-CENTRAL ONTARIO. 
301 
Island and Cape Croker—I found the slender cliff brake ( Pellaea 
gracilis ) and in a sandy marsh at Oliphant, on the shore of Lake 
Huron, I found the marsh horsetail ( Equisetum palustre) to be 
common and the low selaginella (S. spinosa) frequent. Both 
had scattered their spores. 
August 26 I spent on Flower Pot Island at the head of the 
Brace Peninsula, a very rough and rocky island about two miles 
in diameter, inhabited chiefly by a light-house keeper and wild¬ 
cats, and of interest to botanists principally because it is the only 
known station for the wall rue ( Asplenium ruta-muraria) in 
Ontario. I found this fern to be rare, and growing in moss on 
the sides of rather dry limestone boulders. 
Among rock-fragments on the shore there grew a small patch 
of the variegated horsetail ( Equisetum variegatum). 
Flower Pot Island was the only place in north-central Ontario 
where I saw the green spleenwort ( Asplenium viride ) or the 
purple-stemmed cliff-brake ( Pellaea atropurpurea) , though these 
limestone-loving species must exist in many places throughout the 
region. 
Other ferns noted on Flower Pot Island and their abundance 
are : Poly podium vulgare, frequent; Pteris aquilina, frequent; 
Asplenium trichomanes, common; Nephrodium marginale, scarce; 
Nephrodium spinulosum, scarce; Polystichum lonchitis, scarce; 
Cystopteris bulbifera, scarce, and Cystopteris fragilis, common. 
A PECULIAR HYGROSCOPIC MOVEMENT IN THE 
CAPSULES OF KNEIFFIA. 
By Roland M. Harper. 
On the afternoon of August 10, 1905, as I was walking along 
the edge of a brackish marsh about a mile east of Freeport, Long 
Island, my attention was attracted by some specimens of the 
evening primrose, Kneifda linearis (Mx.) Spach (Oenothera 
lineris Mx.), nearly past flowering, bearing numerous ripe cap¬ 
sules all of which were wide open at the apex. The tips of the 
four valves of each capsule diverged at a considerable angle, 
