149 
Supposed new Fern. 
“T am happy to forward you a few fronds of a new fern I have dis- 
covered here, hoping you may be able to make it out; but it is not 
in fructification: yet I am in doubt that when you receive it the 
fronds may have dried too much, and of course be useless, as the 
plant is very tender; but, if such be the case, I could send you more 
when the plants are more advanced. I discovered it about six weeks 
ago. I had been gathering some Gymnogramma ; and so early in the 
season there is nothing but the radical leaves to be found. I hap- 
pened to be in a very wet lane, in which there were several trees, when 
I saw, under the overhanging part of an old hedge, a quantity of 
leaves, resembling a little those of Gymnogramma leptophylla, except 
that they were of a darker green, and rather more cut; and on comparing 
them with the Gymnogramma I concluded they must belong to ano- 
ther species of the same genus. I therefore took a piece of mould, 
with some of the seedlings upon it, and planted it under a bell glass, 
alongside seedlings of G. leptophylla. After a month’s time, I found 
that the new one was different from anything I knew; and I thought 
it had the habit of an Asplenium. I went to the spot again, and 
gathered more; but the specimens were very small, scarcely a quarter 
the size of those under a bell glass. I now send you one from the 
plant I gathered first. This is a water-loving fern, and grows in 
totally different places from G.leptophylla. A friend of mine is going 
up to London in about a month, and I shall send you a nice growing 
specimen by him. I have no doubt of the Gymnogramma being indi- 
genous here.” —John Piquet; 14, York Street, Jersey, March 14, 
1854. 
The President observed, that the fronds which Mr. Piquet had so 
obligingly transmitted with the foregoing note did not exceed an inch 
in length; the stipes and rachis were extremely fragile and delicate ; 
the fronds respectively consisted of four, five, and six, flabelliform, 
sessile pinnz, indented along their outer margin ; there was no trace 
of fructification ; and he failed to discover the difference which Mr. 
Piquet believed to exist between these fronds and those of G. lepto- 
phylla. 
