40 A CONTBIBTJTION TO, ETC. 



yet fully settled." If this be the case with species which have 

 been examined again and again by the most distinguished botanists, 

 it cannot excite surprise to find that great differences of opinion 

 exist as to the proper position of some Australian Perns, especially 

 as many species are yet but imperfectly known, and the great 

 majority of them have been seen only in a dried state by European 

 botanists. In instituting a comparison between British and 

 Australian Perns, one cannot fail to notice the different proportion 

 they bear to the flowering plants in each country ; for whilst in 

 England the proportion is reckoned at one to thirty-five, and in 

 Scotland one to thirty-one, in Australia, the proportion, according 

 to Brown, was one in thirty-seven* * The proportion however, 

 is now known to be much less, yet, while the native species in 

 England, are between forty and fifty only, an equal amount of 

 species might be collected in the counties of Cumberland and 

 Camden, in this colony. But the most striking difference between 

 British and Australian Ferns is in the arborescent habit of some 

 of the latter. In England there is scarcely any species which, 

 in its ordinary state, attains more than six feet in height, whilst 

 in Australia one species of AlsopUla rises to the height of sixty 

 feet. 



Colonel Mundy, in alluding to some of our tree ferns, says, 

 " One might almost fancy that the tall and dense forests around 

 it had drawn up the well-known shrub, or rather weed, of our 

 English deer-parks into a higher order of the vegetable family. 

 When I left England, some of my friends were fern-mad, and 

 nursing little microscopic varieties with vast anxiety and ex- 

 pense. Would that I could place them for a minute beneath the 

 patulous umbrella of this magnificent species of Cryptogamia!" 

 Colonel Mundy does not appear to have seen the largest species 

 of tree ferns ; but the difference between the common English 

 brake and even the ordinary forms of Alsophila or Dicksonia, is 

 very striking to a traveller, and cannot but suggest to his mind 

 the comparative insignificance of English ferns. With respect 

 to the species common to both countries, it is interesting to no- 

 tice that G-ymnogramme leptophylla, Hymenopliyllum Tunbridgense, 

 H. Wilsoni, and Asplenium Trickomanes, flourish in Australia as 



* NOTE. Dr. Mueller computes the flowering plants at about 10,000 species 

 and the ferns at 170. 



