162 AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 
nidus, or great nest-fern, with fronds often six feet long, extends to 
the eastern part of Gippsland ; but the equally grand staghorn-ferns 
(Platycerium alcicorne and P. grande) seemingly cease to advance 
south of Illawarra, while in Northern Queensland Angiopteris eveda 
count amongst the most gorgeous, and two slender AhopMla amongst 
^V^ VUV M.M..WV G~*ft 
nd 
the 
the most graceful forms. The trans-shipment of all these ferns offers 
lucrative inducements to traders with foreign countries. Epiphytal 
orchids, so much in horticultural request, are less numerous in these 
jungle tracts than might have been anticipated, those discovered not 
yet exceeding 30 in number. Their isolated outposts advance in one 
representative species — the Sarcoclrilus Gunnii — to Tasmania and the 
vicinity of Cape Otway, and in another — Cymbid'um canaliculatnm 
towards Central Australia. The comparative scantiness of these epi- 
phytes contrasts as strangely with the Indian orchid- vegetation, as 
with the exuberance of the lovely terrestrial co-ordinal plants through- 
out most parts of extra-tropical Australia, from whence 120 well- 
defined species are known. Still more remarkable is the almost total 
absence of Orchids, both terrestrial and epiphytal, from North a 
North- West Australia, an absence for which in the central parts of the 
continent aridity sufficiently accounts, but for which we have no other 
explanation in the north but that the species have as yet there effected 
but a limited migration. To the jungles and cedar-brushes 
latter so named because they yield that furniture-wood so famed as 
the Eed Cedar (Cedrela Taona, a tree identical, as a species, with the 
Indian plant, though slightly different in its wood)— are absolutely 
confined the Anonacea, Laurinece, Monimiea, Meliacea, Rubiacea, 
Myrmte#) Sapotece, Ebenacece, and Anacardiea, together with the 
baccate Myrtacea, and nearly all the trees of Euphorbiacea, Rutacea, 
Apocynea, Celastrinece , Sapindacea, which, while often outnumbering 
the interspersed eucalypts, seem to transfer the observer to Indian re- 
gions. None in the multitude of trees of these Orders, with excep- 
tion of our tonic-aromatic Sassafras-tree (Atherospermum moscliatum) 
and Hedycarya Cunninghami, which supplies to the natives the fric- 
tion-wood for igniting, pass in the south the latitude of Gipp s " 
land. Palms cease also there to exist, but their number increases 
northward along the east coast, while in Victoria these noble plants 
have their only representative in the tall Cabbage- or Fan-Pah 11 ot 
Snowy Kiver, that Palm which, with the equally hardy Areca *apid*° 
