Short Papers and Notes. 9 
speck in its earlier phases ; and the red kangaroo, which in its full 
growth attains a height of seven feet and a half, measures at birth 
about an inch in length. 
The Filmy Ferns. 
Our native filmy ferns are the tiniest and most fragile-looking 
of the British species. They indeed occupy the sort of border- 
land which exists between ferns and mosses. ‘The common name 
of these ferns very accurately represents their peculiar character, 
which is filmy and pellucid. The generic botanical name, 
Lymenophyllum, is compounded of two Greek words—/Aymen, ‘a 
membrane,” and phyl/on, ‘a leaf,” and refers to the membranous 
nature of the leafy expansion of the frond. If the leafy texture 
of the latter be examined with a magnifying glass, it will be found 
to be beautifully reticulated, or its thin and almost transparent 
substance to be woven of vegetable fibres like network. The 
specific name of Hymenophyllum Tunbridgense refers to the fact of 
its having been first noticed as a British fern in the neighbourhood 
of Tunbridge Wells. It is mostly found growing in the damp 
surfaces of shady rocks, situated either along some watercourse or 
in damp woods. But not unfrequently it has been found clothing 
the trunks of trees in or near streams, or in very damp and shel- 
tered situations, and occasionally even growing amidst moss on 
the ground. In such situations it is commonly found growing in 
company with mosses of various kinds, its hairlike rhizomas and 
rootlets being intermixed with the mossy roots. 
We have found both the filmy ferns growing in great abund- 
ance upon the sides of a hill bordering a moorland stream and 
covered by great masses of rock, amongst which there were trees 
and much other vegetation of a dwarfed or herbaceous kind. 
The situation was an extremely moist one, great mist occasionally 
rising from the river and enveloping the hillside. Clambering 
from rocky mass to rocky mass, we discovered that in numerous 
dark crevices formed by the overlapping edges of several rocks, 
the whole internal surface of stone was densely covered by a 
carpeting of Aymenophyllum, which was especially pleasant and 
luxuriant where trickling moisture oozed down from the higher 
hillside along the external surface of the rock. So dark were 
some of the rocky holes that one could not look into their depths, 
and sometimes, in order to reach the spreading masses of fZymev- 
ophyllum, it was necessary to lie down along the top of the rock, 
and stretch out the hand at arm’s length. In many places, 
however, so moist was the entire atmosphere of the district, that 
the open tops and sides of great stony boulders were densely 
carpeted with filmy ferns, the thick masses of their rhizomas and 
rootlets having no depth of earth, but merely clinging to the damp 
surface of the boulders.—Fern2 World. — 
Vou. III. I—I 
