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stream, growing as it were from amid the granite boulders, which 

 appear to have been hurled from the higher parts of the moor. These 

 rocks are necessarily distributed in a most irregular and uncertain 

 manner : in some places they are heaped upon one another to a con- 

 siderable extent; in others the green turf is not wholly destroyed. 

 The drainage from the higher parts of the moor keeps the lower 

 regions in a more than ordinary wet state, and it is in such spots, 

 where rock and soil are intermingled, that these ferns grow. A large 

 mass of granite, resting on one extremity upon several smaller pieces, 

 overhangs, and thus forms a sort of cave : at the mouth, so to speak, 

 H. VVilsoni usually grows in abundance, fully exposed to the light in 

 a northerly direction : H. Tunbridgense is also at hand, but not at 

 first visible ; you must, in fact, look for it within the darker precincts 

 of the cave, where nearly invariably it will be found growing amongst 

 the moss covering the smaller pieces of granite, though not in such 

 abundance as the other species. This hint may perhaps be useful to 

 fern-cultivators, who usually find Hymenophylla difficult plants to 

 manage. 



Lastren Thelypteris. This fern grows in the greatest abundance in 

 all the swampy, uncultivated ground on the banks of the river below 

 Norwich. 



Lastrea cristata. In September last I discovered a new locality 

 for this rare species in Surlingham Broad, or rather the waste land 

 adjacent to the sheet of water, about five miles from Norwich. I found 

 it only on two spots, and not in any abundance : the fertile fronds 

 were already the worse for wear, having suffered from coming in con- 

 tact with the surrounding rank herbage, through the winds which had 

 previously prevailed. No British fern that I know is so crisp as this, 

 and so easily broken : hence, I presume, arises its early decay. My 

 attention was directed to the first spot where I found it by the yel- 

 lowish green appearance of the fronds, all of which were young and 

 barren, save two miserable specimens. The locality was an exposed 

 one, and the fen-man had recently gone over it with his scythe, which 

 accounts for no old fronds being met with. In the other habitat the 

 plant had been undisturbed by man or beast, and was growing 

 amongst rushes, coarse grass, sedge, and reeds, some of which were 

 far above my head. Here the fern was of a darker hue, and much 

 more luxuriant. Very few specimens of L. spinosa were here to be 

 found, though in the first locality a small form of that plant was the 

 most abundant of the two. I should state that both spots were 

 slightly raised above the level of the marsh, and were comparatively 



