Page:Parsons How to Know the Ferns 7th ed.djvu/242

 course, no clew to Woodsia glabella. The next summer the hunt was renewed and persistently followed up. I found pleasure in securing one by one nearly all our Vermont ferns. At the time I thought it worthy of remembrance that a single field of diversified pasture and woodland on an adjoining farm yielded me thirty species. Although the two common species of Woodsia were near at hand, Woodsia glabella was still eluding my search. I sent a friend to the summit of Jay Peak in a fruitless quest for it. Finally, on September 1st, I joined Mr. Congdon at its old station on Willoughby Mountain, and made myself familiar with its exquisite form.

"During the first two years of my collecting in earnest, 1874 and 1875, several visits were made to Camel's Hump, the peak most accessible to me. In this way some time was lost, because its subalpine area is limited, and consequently the number of rare plants to be found there is small. Yet, with such dogged persistence as sometimes prevents my making good progress, my last visit to that point was not made till the 20th of June, 1876. On that day I clambered, I believe, over every shelf of its great southern precipice and peered into every fissure among the rocks. At last, as I was climbing up the apex over the southeastern buttress, my perilous toil was rewarded by the discovery not only of Woodsia glabella, but of Aspidium fragrans. . . . There were only a few depauperate specimens of each which had not yet succumbed to the adverse conditions of their dry and exposed situation."