Cotenso.—On a Collection of Ferns. 818 
surprising, bearing in mind that several of our described ferns are, as far as 
is known at present, particularly local; some species, indeed, having been 
only detected in one or two places, and there scarce; while others are chiefly 
confined to the South Island. Of all those rarer ones I give here a brief 
list, setting them down pretty nearly in the sequence of their scarcity, or of 
their little-known habitats. 
Gymnogramme rutafolia. 
Nephrolepis tuberosa. 
Todea africana. 
Adiantum formosum. 
Loxsoma cunninghamii. 
Aspidium ocellatum. 
5 cystostegia. 
Nephrodium molle. 
thelypteris var. squamulosum. 
Asplenium richardi. 
Cystopteris fragilis. 
Lomaria pumila. 
aseri 
Trichomanes malingii. 
Hymenophyllum minimum. 
Z lyallii. 
unilaterale. 
aaa salicina, and 
Alsophila colensoi (in the North Island). 
And this is still the more surprising (as we shall see) when we consider 
the entire absence from this small limited locality of some genera more or 
less common to different places in New Zealand which are not included in 
the above list—viz., Gleichenia, Lindsea,.Cheilanthes, Doodia, Nothochlena, 
Lygodium, Schizea, Ophioglossum, and Botrychium; of these nine genera 
half of them have but one species each (in New Zealand), and of the former 
brief list, six genera, also, each contain but one New Zealand species; so 
that, of the whole number of absent genera from that one locality (fifteen), 
no less than eleven contain only one New Zealand species each. 
And here I may be permitted briefly to mention, for the especial benefit 
of my lady and young hearers, and also of strangers (if any) who have not 
yet realized the great advantages of diving into the depths of our New 
Zealand forests,—that to see our ferns in all their natural beauty, they 
should be visited in their cool sequestered retreats and bowers and grots at 
two seasons of the year, namely, in the spring and early summer, and in the 
autumn verging into winter. At the /irst of these two seasons many of them 
