On the Botany of Tahiti. Ixix. 
bushes, so that the abyss on each side is completely hidden from view, and 
even if it was possible to stick on to a bank of slippery earth, few people would 
like to try the experiment if they could not see a bottom to arrive at in case 
they slipped. I am a tolerably good climber myself over rocks or up trees, 
but I confess that I never could muster courage to descend any of those earth 
cliffs, particularly after a small experiment which I made one day in climbing 
up а steep earthy ridge about as wide as a horse’s back, which experiment 
resulted in my slipping back about fifty feet, to the great detriment of my 
nails and breeches in front, and thinking myself exceedingly lucky at last to 
fall in with a Metrosideros bush, which brought me up just at the edge of a 
still further descent of about 150 feet, where I should not have had the 
advantage of slipping down astride. After this, when I saw any tempting- 
looking plants just beneath me, on the crest of a hill, I contented myself with. 
speculating on the probable distance I should have to travel ere I reached the 
bottom if I over-reached myself, at the same time taking particular care not 
to do so. 
The most common tree to be found in such situations is à large Araliaceous 
plant, with compressed leaves and about ten consolidated styles, also a plant 
perhaps of the Celastroma, which was procured by my friend M. Vesco, in 
flower, with tufted entire leaves, like a Daphne, and axillary racemes of 
flowers with an irregular number of lobes and stamens, and apparently a large 
disk in place of style. I send you a bad specimen of it, which was all I could 
get. 
The common tree-fern of the mountains (a Cyathea) is the ugliest I ever 
saw, and at the same time one of the most curious ; it is slender, and quite 
smooth in the trunk, showing the scars only at considerable intervals, and, 
apparently in consequence of its great rapidity of growth, the leaves have their 
bases quite distinct from one another, and more than an inch apart, instead of 
being, as in all the other species I have seen, quite closely overlapping. It is 
also curious in throwing out a species of tuberous offset from the upper part 
of the trunk ; these are attached by a small neck to the parent, and in time 
throw out leaves. I suppose that in time they become too heavy and fall off, 
making young plants. J hope to send you one or two of them alive to 
England. There is also a Cyathea, very like C. dealbata of New Zealand, but 
it is very rare ; it is not proliferous. A slender one, not proliferous, and a 
very handsome one, with a stout stem, the leaves of which much resemble 
those of C. medullaris of New Zealand ; it is sparingly proliferous. I think 
I have live plants of this also. I do not know of any more species of tree: 
ferns, but the natives, who call the curious wool of the Sandwich Island tree- 
fern mamau (mammow), say that the same substance is found, although very 
rarely, in their own mountains ; it is, however, possible that they allude to 
