AND THE NEIGHBOURING DISTRICTS. 193 
Mr. Brown has indicated a few points of resemblance between the botany of Australia 
and that of the temperate parts of South America; but these all, I think, belong to 
Chile. On the eastern side of the continent, within the latitudes in question, I am not 
aware of any plant that can at all remind us of the Australian Flora. It is rather 
remarkable, that the Protea family, which occurs, though sparingly scattered, in Fuegia, 
Chile, Peru, Guiana, and tropical Brazil, seems to be entirely absent from the region of 
which I treat. 
I shall conclude with a few remarks upon some of the families contained in the collec- 
tions before me, and on the range of particular species. 
Filices.—At Porto Alegre and one or two other points in the extreme south of Brazil, 
about 30° 8. lat., Mr. Fox collected fifty-four species of Ferns. This collection strongly 
exemplifies the wide range of species in this family, pointed out by Sir W. Hooker and 
by Dr. Joseph Hooker ; for nearly the whole are natives of tropical Brazil, and at least 
one-half of the number occur likewise to the north of the Equator,—in the West Indies, 
Caraccas, Guiana, or Mexico. Two extend even to Europe,—Aspleniwm marinum and 
Osmunda regalis. The Rio Grande specimens of this Osmunda agree perfectly with the 
ordinary British form. 
Of the fifty-four Ferns, forty-nine belong to Polypodiacee* ; two to Gleicheniaceæ, two 
to Schizeacee, and one to Osmundacee. Two are arborescent, Didymochlena sinuosa and 
Alsophila armata. This, I suppose, is the southernmost limit of Tree Ferns on the eastern 
side of South America. | 
Buenos Ayres is remarkably poor in this family of plants. During the month that I 
spent there, although I paid much attention to botany, I did not observe a single Fern ; 
and in the collections made by Mr. Fox, who, I know, took particular interest in this 
family, I find only onet Fern from the south side of the Plata. This circumstance is not 
at all surprising, for the bare, level, shadeless, treeless plains of Buenos Ayres are pecu- 
liarly unsuited to the Ferns. And we may observe, that even where there is a warm 
climate and a tolerably large supply of atmospheric moisture, (for both these conditions 
exist at Buenos Ayres,) these plants do not seem to flourish unless there be shade and 
variety of surface. In accordance with this, is the absence of Ferns from the bare table- 
land of Mexicot, and their great scarcity on the open campos of the interior of Brazil. 
The neighbourhood of Graham’s Town, in South Africa, has a much drier climate 
Buenos Ayres, yet the ravines and rocks there, affording shade and shelter from the wind, 
rodu Ferns. 
: Eh the Grasses colleeted on the banks of the Uruguay and La Plata, I 
find the Poacee (according to the division established by Mr. Brown) to be rather mem 
numerous than the Panicee; the former, however, including a few naturalized species. 
The comparatively small number of Grasses in the collection does not ape ne je sup- 
pose that it is, in this respect, at all a fair representative of the vegetation — 
i i in Hooker's Journal of Botany. 
* T follow the arrangement of Mr. J. Smith, published in M : 
+ This is a Blechnum (or Lomaria? for Mr. Fox's specimens have no fructification) which seems to agree with the 
description of Blechnum auriculatum, Cav. 
f See Martens and Galeotti, Fougères de la Mexique. 
VOL. XXI. 
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