ANDREWS ON HTMENOPHYLLA. 75 



Cyathea Cunningkami, and the nikau, or cabbage palm, Areca sapida, 

 which grow in the dense forests that bound that valley, all attain a 

 magnificent and lofty height. 



From a glowing representation of a friend who visited that valley 

 and kindly sent me seeds and many specimens of living plants, 

 nothing, he expresses, can surpass the extreme beauty and richness 

 of foliage and tint that on all sides surround you. The lofty totara* 

 the rimuf and the mai,\ the parasite rata, king of the New Zealand 

 trees (Metrosideros robusta), and intermingled in interminable masses, 

 are growing with surprising vigour and beauty. Solatium aviculare, 

 Fuchsia excorticata, many beautiful shrubs of the Pitlosporece and of the 

 Myrtacece, especially Myrtus bullata, and Ralphii, which seem laced 

 together by the supple-jack (Rhipogonum scandens), hareao of the 

 natives. There may be met the fragrant flowers of Veronica speciosa, 

 the growth always indicating rich alluvial soil; the Karaha (Coryno- 

 • carpus laevigata), a noble laurel-leaved tree, and the ti-tree with its 

 nodule of bright green leaves, present such varied features that he 

 could have gazed for hours were he not driven by the incessant and 

 unbearable attacks of myriads of the tipulidce to retreat to more airy 

 and open grounds. 



It is there that the ferns of which the moist and mild climata of 

 New Zealand is so productive abound. Numerous are the genera, but 

 I shall confine myself to the subject of the paper, Hymenophyllum, 

 slightly referring to some allied forms. My daughter, who had also 

 visited that valley, corroborates the foregoing description, and mentions 

 the luxuriance with which the ferns grow in the oppressively moist 

 and close atmosphere of the numerous gorges and dells of the valley. 

 Trichomanes and Hymenophyllum cover the rocks and shaded recesses in 

 vast carpets of deep and of brilliant or lively green, and especially 

 around the huge trunks of the Eata and the Karaka, from which many 

 beautifully suspended, and hang in graceful masses from those trees, 

 and from the trunks of the tree ferns. 



Locality has much effect in the characteristics of those ferns, for 

 in the more shaded recesses are to be met the beautiful fronds of 

 Leptopteris sicperba, the old fronds recumbent and spreading; exhibiting 

 a rich deep green, of velvety appearance, while the young fronds rife 

 erect in the centre like a crest of feathers. L. pellucida has a pleasing 

 and delicate appearance — transparent, like Hymenophyllum; and glisten- 

 ing with moisture where it grows, affected by the spray of the rushing 

 streamlet near it. The Leptopteris hymenophylloides, heru-heru of the 

 natives, covers with luxuriant growth spots not so sheltered, and is of 

 more strong and rigid form, as the specimens which I exhibit plucked in 

 that beautiful valley show. From the examination of L. pellucida which 



* Podocarpus tatara. 



f Dacrydium cupressinuin. 



X Podocarpus spicata. 



