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Mr. Callvveirs treatment had been most successful ; indeed it might 

 be said that no one had so extensively cultivated this beautiful plant. 

 An equable temperature, moisture, and a kind of diurnal twilight were 

 the features best suited to the health and vigorous luxuriance of the 

 plants. They would bear extremes of cold, provided the temperature 

 was even or not subject to transition. Mr. Callwell had, however, 

 tried a most successful plan of growth in the addition of charcoal. 

 The use of peat charcoal had been most advantageously applied to 

 the culture of plants in several gardens in England, particularly in 

 those fine gardens of Bicton, in Devonshire, where, with New Holland 

 plants, the success of peat charcoal was astonishing. Charcoal, loam, 

 heath-mould, with river sand and good drainage, will succeed with 

 most plants. The first notice of this beautiful fern in Britain was at 

 Belbank, in Yorkshire, a barren specimen only being found. It was 

 quoted in Hudson's ' Flora Anglica ' as Trichomanes pyxidiferum of 

 Pluraier. Dr. Mackay, however, finding plants at Killarney in fructi- 

 fication, decided its distinction from the plant of Plumier, and it was 

 figured in ' English Botany ' by Sir J. E. Smith as Hymenophyllura 

 alatum, from its winged stem. Subsequently it was named Tricho- 

 manes brevisetum, which name it retained until the discovery, in 1842, 

 in Iveragh, Kerry. The peculiar character of growth and fructifica- 

 tion at once led to its identity with Trichomanes radicans of Swartz, 

 and the comparison with specimens from the Mauritius, from the West 

 Indies, and from South America, established its affinity with those 

 tropical species, and, as Sir Wm. Hooker observed, spoke volumes in 

 favour of the climate of the south-west of Ireland. Mr. Andrews said 

 that the treatment adopted by Mr. Callwell, by regulating the tempe- 

 rature, would be applicable to the culture of the exotic species of these 

 beautiful ferns. The West India Islands are remarkable for the va- 

 riety and beauty of the family of the Hymenophylla, particularly those 

 of volcanic origin. The Iveragh plants, in the alternate, numerous, 

 pinnated, almost pellucid fronds, bear, as to growth, a near resem- 

 blance to the Trichomanes radicans and T. brachypus of Jamaica and 

 St. Vincent's, which beautiful plants in those islands, at the highest 

 elevations, spread like a velvet carpet over the moist and massive 

 trunks of aged trees. The Rev. Lansdowne Guilding describes the T. 

 radicans of St. Vincent's to have long creeping main stems or caudices. 

 The true T. pyxidiferum of Jamaica grows abundantly in the island of 

 St. Vincent's, at an elevation of 2,000 feet above the level of the sea, 

 thus showing that this tribe in the tropics affects a nuich higher eleva- 

 tion, where the temperature, being lower, is more conducive to their 



