CLIFFS AND FISSURES. 341 



Contrasting with these in their light and fragile 

 beauty, we see the rigid, massive, hart's-tongue-shaped 

 leaves of Campyloneurum nitidum, shining dark-green 

 above, and studded with round spots of golden fruit 

 beneath, whose scaly root-stock creeps about the base 

 of the rocks, clinging firmly to the angles and points 

 of the limestone. 



In the gloomier part of the pass, for the cliffs are 

 now precipitous on either side, we see noble tufts of a 

 Fern, which we should say is our own Sea Spleenwort, 

 but for the great size of the fronds, which are two feet 

 long. And possibly, after Mr Foot's Irish experience, 

 it may be the same ; though botanists have been accus- 

 tomed to call this Caribbean form Asplenium Icetum. 

 Very unfamiliar, however, is the appearance of Anemia 

 phyllitidis, which rears its flowering spikes at the 

 base of these precipices ; for, from a dwarf erect stem, 

 leaves like those of the ash are thrown out, each of 

 which sends off from the origin of the first pair of 

 leaflets a pair of erect, slender stalks, which are each 

 crowned with a brown spike of fructification, resem- 

 bling that of our own Osmunda, but of finer texture. 

 And still more uncouth, more bizarre, is yet another 

 denizen of these fissured rocks, the Dictyoglossum crini- 

 tum, perhaps the oddest example of this order known. 

 Each leaf is a roundish or elliptical lamina, some twelve 

 inches in length, and half as broad ; thick, and stiff, 

 filled with veins united in the most elaborate network ; 

 the whole surface studded with harsh, rigid, black 

 hairs, most abundant on the margins and on the foot- 



