THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 131 



little plant had twined over and round the stones and was thriving 

 splendidly. 



"That again," he said, "is the dearest bargain ever I made. I 

 paid five shillings for that, and I will sell it to anybody for half a 

 croon!" It was a shabby little hart's tongue witli frilled edges, I liave 

 a frond of it now. He spoke of, and to them all, as his children. 

 " That ane is resting, they sometimes take a good sleep, it does'na 

 do to waive them up too soon!" Again, "I think a lot o' that, I 

 heard they were going to drain a lake, one of the few spots in 

 Scotland where this fern was to be found, and I determined to get a 

 specimen. The place was many miles away, so I started in the 

 evening, got there by the time the water was low enough for me to 

 reach the rocks where the fern grew, and was back with my prize in 

 time to begin work in the morning." Patterson was pleased by our 

 evident admiration, and sending for a pair of scissors, carefully cut 

 for me specimen fronds of nearly all his varieties. "Yes," said he 

 as we bade him farewell, "if somebody wad make me a present of 

 about £50 a year, so that I need'na work at the shoemaking, / 

 think — ," with a self satisfied wag of the head — , " / might make a bit 

 o' a Naturalist. ''"' 



THE ORCHIDEiE OF VICTORIA. 



By C. French. Government Botanist's Department, (Part 6.) 

 (^Continued.) 



P.jiavum. (R. Brown.) A very beautiful and robust species, 

 found growing in company with P. elatum, and excepting in the color 

 of flowers, which are yellow, it is very like the latter, in height, 

 habit, time of flowering, and in general appearance, and when the 

 plant is not in flower, it is almost impossible to distinguish the one 

 from the other. In the moist flats about Brighton, Cheltenham, 

 Caulfield, Frankston, &c., this species may be found growing in 

 great luxuriance, often 3 feet in height, with stems nearly 1 an inch 

 in diameter, and quite erect. To grow this plant well, it should be 

 treated exactly in the same manner as the former species, and with 

 which it forms an excellent companion plant. In my account of 

 F. elatum, I had forgotten to mention the fact of these two plants 

 growing very frequently with their tubers in or near the matted 

 roots of our dwarf grass-tree, Xanthorrhea minor, also called by the 

 colonists, Blackfellow's heads, and this peculiarity in their growth 

 renders this plant sometimes difficult of removal, so that it is 

 advisable to take a small spade with you on excursions of this kind, 

 as the ordinary garden trowel is of little use for the larger tubers of 

 these two species. This plant nearly always loses its color when 



