once, s6 that before the end of that same year, Kew was 
possessed of the finest specimen in Europe,. transmitted 
moreover free of cost for transport or voyage. 
None of these St. Petersburg examples equalled that here 
figured in bulk or weight; and owing to defective treatment, 
their foliage was so starved, that they looked rather like 
grotesque vegetable monsters, than the truly noble plants 4 
which they would have been, had their natural wants been 
supplied. As with almost all other Ferns, Zodea barbara 
likes humidity and shade, and it is under these conditions 
that, at the bottom of the dark gorges of the Australian Alps, 
it attains its gigantic bulk and luxuriant crown of fronds, 
growing out of steep banks, with its base often washed by a 
torrent. Stuck upright in a tub, as usually planted in our 
greenhouses, the roots which clothe the huge caudex soon 
dry, and the fronds are imperfectly developed; but when set 
upon a Shallow vessel of water, propped up between stones 
in front, a mass of earth kept in place by cask-staves 
behind, and when stones, earth, and caudex are clothed with 
Lycopodium, it sends out fountains of fronds throughout the 
year. The specimen here figured arrived at Kew in the 
autumn of 1869, and weighed in its dry state, when taken 
out of the box of sawdust in which it was packed, exactly 
fifteen cwt.; it then had not a frond developed on it, now it 
has some 30 crowns, and in all just 160 fronds, averaging 
five feet in length. The reduced figure given on the accom- 
panying plate, being taken from above the level of the plant, 
gives no idea of its stateliness and effect. 
Still larger specimens than the above have been since sent 
to Europe by Baron Von Mueller, of which one, presented by 
him to Mr. J. Booth, of Flottbeck, Hamburgh, weighed one 
ton three ewt., 
high, seven feet nine inches wide, and three feet three inches 
in its smaller diameter. 
The genus Zbdea takes the place of Osmunda, in the 
Southern hemisphere, and was united with it by R. Brown, 
ast think with much reason. 7. darbara is a native of 
Tasmania, S. and E. Australia, and South Africa, in which 
latter country, however, it does not, in so far as I know, attain 
the dimensions that it does in Australia. Linneus named 
it Acrostichum barbarum, because of its African origin ; but it 
is not a native of Barbary.—J. D. H. 
- 
its dimensions being five feet eight inches” : 
