222 Transactions. — Botany. 



leaf of a minute, slender Hepatica, or of a little wee moss, we 

 shall find the truest adherence to the type in the form and the 

 colour, the structure, and the regular shape of its cellules ; and 

 so of the still more minute and more compound microscopical 

 parts of their fructification, — as the external and internal teeth, 

 etc., of the capsule of a moss. Here, in these very minute, and 

 too often overlooked if not despised, productions of Nature, is to 

 be clearly seen her trustiness, her regularity, her profusion, her 

 glory, her beauty ! Linnaeus, contemplating them, truly ex- 

 claimed,— "Legi aliquot Dei vestigia per creata rerum, in 

 quibus omnibus, etiam minimis, ut fere nullis, qua? vis! quanta 

 sapientia ! quaru inextricabilis perfectio ! " 



Class III. Ceyptogamia. 



Order I. FILICES. 

 Genus 2a. :|: Hemitelia, Br. 

 1. H. (Amphicosmia) stellulata, sp. nov. 



Trunk erect, 4-5 feet high, stout, girth at base 2 feet, under 

 crown 1 foot 9 inches, dark brownish black below, covered with 

 its own descending fibrous rootlets, that are soft, spongy, and 

 light coloured at tips. Fronds, 26-30 in a crown, spreading, 

 drooping, bipinnate, broadly lanceolate, not acuminate, 5 feet 

 long, 2 feet 4 inches wide at middle, sub-coriaceous but softish, 

 bright green, glabrescent, shining above, under- surface a little 

 paler and finely stippled with white dots ; pinnae rather close 

 set and overlapping, possessing (with segments) a rumpled 

 semi-rugulose yet pleasing appearance, with numerous weak 

 pale-brownish scattered reticulated scales on costa? and veins, 

 especially on upper surface ; stipe stout, very short, triquetrous, 

 somewhat succulent and brittle, dark-brown, muricated (as also 

 is lower rhachis), very scaly at base ; scales If inches long, sub- 

 ovate-acuminate with long filiform tips, dark-brown-red, shining, 

 margined, margins erose (not serrulate), cells of centre numerous, 

 narrow-linear, of margin larger and sub-quadrate ; rhachis stout, 

 sub-cylindrical, flattish above, pale-yellowish-green, sparsely 

 warted throughout (also stipe) with small oblong and round 

 coloured warts, running in a line between pinnae ; rhachis, 

 secondary rhachises, and costaa densely covered above with red- 

 dish and yellowish strigillose hairs, and below with scattered 

 long scarious reddish scales ; under them is a peculiar short 

 dark-red starry patent sessile pubescence, very closely set, which, 

 with the long scales, though persistent, are easily rubbed off 

 from exposed parts ; pinnae, middle, 14 inches long, 4 inches 



* The numbers attached to the genera in this paper are those of them 

 in " The Handbook N.Z. Flora ; " but Hemitelia is not to be found separate 

 in that work, being placed under Cyathea, No. 2. 



