Page:Parsons How to Know the Ferns 7th ed.djvu/215

 by the plants are quite dry. I think it would be fatal to the plant if much spray should fall on it during the season of its active growth. When you enter the shade and solitude of the haunts of this fern, its presence is betrayed by its resinous odor; looking up the face of the cliff, usually mottled with lichens and moss, you see it often far above your reach hanging against the rock, masses of dead brown fronds, the accumulations of many years, preserved by the resinous principle which pervades them; for the fronds, as they disport regularly about the elongating caudex, fall right and left precisely like a woman's hair. Above the tuft of drooping dead fronds, which radiate from the centre of the plant, grow from six to twenty green fronds, which represent the growth of the season, those of the preceding year dying toward autumn."