No other fern grows in the denser portions of this hemlock twilight, though the Christmas fern clings close to it, and does not spread to the more open glades on other portions of the hill. Another northern hill of similar steepness but shaded by an old growth of pines through which certain sunlight filters during most of the day has specimens of the _Polystichum acrostichoides_ growing only in its most sheltered nooks from which they do not seem to spread even to the brighter spots near by on the same declivity. Hence I infer that the plant prefers the twilight, and does not thrive in even occasional sunlight. Just at the base of this second hill, however, where cool springs begin to bubble forth in the mottled shadow, I caught a gleam of a lighter, lovelier green that was like a dapple of sunlight on clumps of Christmas ferns, and I came near passing it by for that. Then, because I had never seen this fern growing in a dapple of sunlight, I went to it and found that I had chanced upon a group of the spinulose wood fern. The plumose fronds showed no more winter effects than did those of the Christmas ferns. The keen frosts had not shrivelled them, nor was there any hint of the brown that might come with the ripening of leaves or the departure of sap. Like the other ferns they had suffered a failing of tissues near the base of the stipe, but pinnules, midribs and rachis were as softly, radiantly green as they had been under the full warmth of the summer sun. Owing to this failure of tissues in the stipe they lay flat to the ground, but they were still beautiful, perhaps more so than they had been when they stood more erect in summer, and were obscured and hidden by the other green things of the wood. I know I tramped within a few feet of them again and again last summer without noticing them, yet to-day they caught my eye a long way off, and held it in admiration even after a long and close inspection. Farther down in the very swamp, laid flat along the sphagnum and oftentimes frozen to it, were fronds of the crested shield-fern and the patches of these tolled me far from my find and it was only on coming back for another look that I discovered the prettiest thing about it. That was, near by and half sheltered by tips of the elder fronds, young plants of the same variety, just advancing from the prothallus stage and having one or two miniature fronds like those of the parent plant but not more than two or three inches long.