603 



Trichomanes and Hymenophyllum. His remarks were 

 chiefly directed to the species of Trichomanes discovered by 

 him in September, 1842, in the western part of the County 

 of Kerry, and which presented a variety of growth and state 

 of fructification so much more developed and characteristic 

 of the genus of that beautiful fern than had hitherto been 

 met with in Ireland, that determined him to examine its 

 affinities with some of the exotic ferns, particularly with 

 those of the West India Islands. 



The Trichomanes was first discovered in Britain, by Dr. 

 Richardson, at Belbank, near Bingley, Yorkshire, a wretched 

 specimen of which is in the Banksian Herbarium, now in the 

 British Museum : a figure of a barren frond is given in Dill, 

 in Raii Syn. S. p. 127, t. 3. This specimen, however, not 

 having been found in fructification, was supposed to be 

 identical with the Filix (Trichomanes) pyxidifera of Plu- 

 mier, and was described as such by Hudson, in his Flora 

 Anglica, p. 461 : and this name it retained until its disco- 

 very, in the month of October, 1804, at Turk Waterfall, near 

 Killarney, by Mr. Mackay, Curator of the Botanic Garden 

 of Trinity College. Mr. Mackay obtaining this beautiful 

 fern in fructification, forwarded specimens to Sir James 

 Edward Smith, who at once decided its distinctness from 

 Plumier's plant, and considered it to be a new species, which 

 he named and figured in English botany as Hymenophyllum 

 alatum, from its winged stipe. The distinguished Robert 

 Brown, the first physiological botanist of the day, corrected 

 this specific appellation to that of brevisetum (Br. in Hort. 

 Kew. ed. 2, 5, p. 529), from the short and barely exserted 

 state of the receptacles that the Killarney plants generally 

 presented. Mr. E. Newman, who has devoted so much at- 

 tention to the specific characteristics of the British ferns, 

 formed the first view, that the Killarney species perfectly 

 agreed with Willdenow's description (Sp. Plant. 5, p. 514) 

 of the Speciosum of Teneriffe, and published it as such, in 



