AUSTRALIAN FEENS. 83 



not accessible to sheep. Miss Atkinson recently found some on 

 a hill near Berrima, and Mrs. Selkirk noticed it, in considerable 

 quantities, in the Episcopal Churchyard at Eichmond. 



From a review of the ferns of Australia, so far as they are 

 hitherto known, it appears that the species described are about 

 160, being more than those indigenous in New Zealand. Accord- 

 ing to a recent estimate, those islands are said to present by far 

 the richest assemblage of ferns in the south temperate zone, 

 nearly 120 species, besides many marked varieties. The ferns of 

 Tasmania are, with few exceptions, identical with those of New 

 Zealand; and in Australia there are more species common to 

 both countries than was formerly supposed, as the variations of 

 some forms are not now regarded as distinct species. About 

 twenty of our ferns occur in Norfolk Island, and eleven are similar 

 to European ones, of which last number " the occurrence of the 

 rather common Australian and New Zealand Gymnogramme rutce- 

 folia in the Pyrenees, where it is extremely scarce, and no where 

 else in the whole world, so far as is known, is one of the most re- 

 markable facts in the distribution of plants that has ever been 

 made known." Eecent discoveries in North-Eastern Australia 

 have revealed to us some widely distributed species identical with 

 the East Indian ferns, and those of the Oriental Archipelago, 

 amongst which Diplazium polypodioides (collected by Mr. Dallachy, 

 at Eockiugham Bay, and lately by Mr. Macgillivray, on the Eich- 

 moiid Eiver) is one of the most interesting. Within the last few 

 years, great progress has been made in ascertaining the geo- 

 graphical distribution of species, and the probable identity of 

 plants formerly regarded as distinct, but from the materials before 

 us, abundant as they are when compared with former researches, 

 it is evident that much remains to be elucidated before any com- 

 parative tables of the ferns common to diiferent countries can be 

 implicitly relied on. The first great step towards the investi- 

 gation of Australian ferns was the publication of Eobert Brown's 

 " Frodromus Florae Novce-Hollandice " and it is astonishing, after 

 the lapse of half a century, to find that recent explorers have not 

 added to the descriptions of that illustrious botanist more well- 

 marked species than they have done. In comparing the species 

 known to Brown with those enumerated in the late work of Sir 

 William Hooker, the reflecting mind is led to appreciate more 



