a deep shining green, and the;surface is marked with many 
parallel, almost horizontal nerves ; beneath paler. Fruc- 
tifications forming a'continued, line on each side of, and 
very near the midrib, reaching from near the base almost 
to the summit. Involucre opening inward. Capsules very 
numerous, brown. | 
Like the tropical Orcumez, the Exotic Ferns were long 
supposed to be very difficult of cultivation ; but now, in 
many stoves of our country they form a striking and a beau- 
tiful feature ; and they possess this peculiar advantage, 
that they flourish, perhaps, best, where other plants will 
scarcely live, namely, under the shade of taller plants. Thus 
they may be advantageously employed to fill up vacancies 
upon the stages, which otherwise look bare and unsightly, 
with a foliage the most varied and most graceful that can 
be imagined. They delight in a peat or heath soil; and 
in the Liverpool and Glasgow Botanic Gardens, as well 
as, I believe, at Mr. Loppicses, where the most numerous 
collections may be found, the roots are placed between 
two broken pieces of a garden pot, and always kept moist : 
a simple way of imitating the rocky situations in which so 
many of them are seen in a state of nature. 
The present species may be reckoned among the rarest 
that we have in cultivation, and it was sent to the Glasgow 
Botanic Garden, with very many others, by Mr. Locxaart 
from the island of Trinidad. No other Botanist seems to’ 
have been acquainted with it except Humsoxpr, who dis- 
covered it growing in the opposite country of the Caraccas, 
in shady and stony places, near San Augustin and Caripe, _ 
at an elevation of almost three thousand feet above the 
level of the sea. itewig vlostess fost “a 
as 
Fig. 1. Extremity of a Pinna, with its Fructifics cation. 8. Capsules.— 
; 7+. 
2 
. ee seas ae a 5 é '3 542. 
, ; me i. 
; tee Se aie t “6 
er . se poke ge 
