292 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



which the fertile fronds were shrivelled up, having been in per- 

 fection in the wet season, and two or three Hymenophylla in the 

 same state ; so that if we make allowance for the few species 

 which must have eluded my search, we may safely assume that 

 I left at least 20 ferns ungathered, and the whole number may 

 be taken at 140, that is, of ferns existing in a space not more 

 than four miles long by three-quarters of a mile broad, or of three 

 square miles. Perhaps few parts of the world possess so many 

 species of ferns growing naturally in so small an area. 



The five species of tree-ferns gathered in fruit all grow in 

 tolerable abundance, and one of them, an Alsophila, with a trunk 

 40 feet high, large, stout, pale green fronds, and exactly opposite 

 pinnae, is perhaps the handsomest tree-fern I ever saw. The 

 Cyathea has almost constantly, below its own fronds, a supple- 

 mentary crown of numerous deep green, widely arched, sterile 

 fronds of a Lomaria, among which spring vertically the slender, 

 pectinate, fertile fronds ; while the trunk is enveloped in a 

 continuous sheath of the soft, pale, but clear green foliage of 

 Bartmmia viridissima, C. Mull. ; the whole forming one of those 

 lovely pictures which only those who seek out Nature in her 

 remotest recesses are privileged to see. 



Musci 



This Bartramia was in good fruit, but the great part of the 

 mosses had fruited during the rainy season, and the number of 

 species was by no means so great as one would have supposed, 

 to see the dense festoons of moss depending from old trees. 

 They are in main part composed of two or three species, which 

 modern botanists would refer to Trachypus, of as many Meteoria, 

 and of a Frullania. Rhacopilinn tomentosum is frequent, as it is 

 all through the roots of the Cordillera, on both sides; and 

 another Rhacopilum (7?. pofythrincium, MSS.) grows in some 

 abundance. Orthotricha, common enough in the region of the 

 Hill Barks, scarcely descend below 6000 feet, and at Limon their 

 place is supplied by Macromitrium and Schlotheimia, both very 

 sparingly represented. Hookerise, so abundant and ornamental 

 on the eastern slope of the Cordillera, in the same latitude and 

 altitude, barely exist at Limon. 



HEPATIC.*: 



Hepaticoi are rather more varied than mosses, and the genus 

 Plagiochila, especially, is well represented. Notwithstanding the 

 vast variety of Plagiochilce I have gathered on the Amazon and 

 on the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Quito, I still found 

 new forms at Limon. The favourite site of this genus is in the 

 warm and temperate region of the Andes. Lower down the 



