352 FERNS. 



vegetation conceals the wet ground, among which the 

 dangerous dumbcane towers, with its broad arrowy 

 leaves, of whose juice a single drop is sufficient to 

 swell up the lips and tongue, and preclude speech. 

 The hard gray limestone rises in steep walls nearly 

 meeting overhead, ah 1 fretted and eroded with deep 

 hollows and sharp points, like the rocks of our Devon- 

 shire coasts. In these little cavities elegantly twisted 

 shell-snails reside ; and in the larger ones, always brim- 

 ming with water, the shrieking tree-toads delight to sit, 

 enjoying their cool bath. And out of the same cre- 

 vices many species of Film-ferns, Hymenopliyllum and 

 Trichomanes, project their tufts of pellucid fronds, 

 and twine their matted wiry roots around the groined 

 projections. In the same fissures, and out of the 

 rough bark of the tall trees that rear themselves 

 towards the light by the wall-like cliffs, spring several 

 kinds of GleicJienia, (G. Bancroftii, and others ;) a 

 genus of Ferns of singular aspect, possessing wide- 

 spread fronds of very lax habit, and of very minute 

 segments, but so peculiarly elegant and delicate, that 

 they have been termed the aristocracy of the fern- 

 tribes. 



Last, but not least, we emerge on a region where 

 the true arborescent species, the tall Tree-ferns, grow 

 in their majesty. 



The handsome Dicksonia cicutaria, when old, 

 forms an umbrella of vivid glossy green fronds, set 

 on a true tree-like stem of considerable thickness, 

 though of no great height. And Hemitelia yrandi* 



