Page:Parsons How to Know the Ferns 7th ed.djvu/243

 In the following passage Mr. Pringle describes his pleasure, some years later, in the companionships fostered by a common interest in his pet hobby:

"... my delight in this preserve of boreal plants was shared with not a few genial botanists. Charles Faxon came before any of us suspected that he possessed undeveloped talent for a botanical artist of highest excellence. Edwin Faxon followed his young brother, and with me made the tedious ascent to Stirling Pond, a day of toil well rewarded. Thomas Morong came, before the hardships of his Paraguayan journey had broken him down. . . . Our honored President came. . . . In those days, as now, ... he was often my companion to add delight to my occupation and to reinforce my enthusiasm. . . . The gentle Davenport came at last to behold for the first time in their native haunts many of the objects of his first love and study. When I had found for him yet once more in a fifth Vermont station (this was under Checkerberry Ledge, near Bakersfield) the fern he at first desired, and, together with that, had discovered within our limits three or four others quite as rare and scarcely expected, I might feel that I had complied with the request of his letter. But that letter initiated a warm friendship between us and association in work upon American ferns, which has continued to the present time. During these twenty-three years of botanical travel on my part my hands have gathered all but thirty-six of the one hundred and sixty-five species of North American ferns, and from the more remote corners