CoLENSo. — On some New Zealand Ferns. 621 



Eicliard's folio copperplate engraving with dissections of that 

 species, and, on a close and prolonged examination and com- 

 parison, 1 find the differential characters to be both clear and 

 constant : I have given them iti my rather long description. 

 I also possess good drawings with dissections of several other 

 species, as LL. flcxuosuni, dichotomuvi, javanicnm, scandens, 

 voliibile, and retictilatum, all differing. 



The history (so to speak) of these three ferns is somewhat 

 peculiar, and therefore may be briefly narrated. 



In my preparing a paper recently for our society, " On the 

 Tin-mines and Mining of Cornwall" (England), I recollected 

 that I possessed a collection of minerals — tin and copper, lead 

 and iron ores — that I had received from Home in the early 

 days (somewhere in the thirties), but I did not know in which 

 of my old unopened cases to find them. On opening one at a 

 guess, I found it was not the one that I wanted, but it con- 

 tained a heterogenous lot of all sorts — " odds and ends,'' 

 pamphlets, letters, small boxes, and Maori curios, and several 

 specimens of dried plants still in very good condition, although 

 they were certainly moi^e than fifty years old, the box having 

 been packed by me in 1844, on leaving the Bay of Islands for 

 Hawke's Bay, and not since opened. Among those specimens 

 were these three ferns (with several others — known ones), and 

 a few Phsenogams. I have endeavoured to recollect the exact 

 localities where I had met with them, but in vain. Yet, 

 while such is obscure, from some other specimens put up 

 with them, as Adiantum cethiopicum, and Grammitis lep- 

 tophylla {Cr. novce-zealandm, Col.), both in great plenty, 

 whose special habitat I well remember — between Auck- 

 land and the head of Manukau Harbour — and also from spe- 

 cimens of Alseuosmia banksii and Pennantia corymhosa (all 

 then rare with me at the north), I know that these three 

 ferns here described must have been also found in that 

 country or district named — and probably near the end of my 

 long journey overland from Hawke's Bay to the Bay of 

 Islands in the years 1843-44. Moreover, on my arrival 

 there in February, being beyond my fixed time, and having 

 very much of other and far different matters to attend to, 

 those specimens were put aside and forgotten. 



Further, I cannot but believe that specimens of these three 

 ferns must have been again met with during the last fifty 

 years by the many fern-collectors and amateurs in that now 

 well-known district, and, if so, probably placed under other 

 and allied species — as Trichomanes under T. clongatum ; 

 CheilantJies under C. tenuifolia, or Nothochlcena distans ; and 

 Lygodium under L. articuiatuni — as there is a kind of family 

 resemblance between them at first sight and without close 



