1?0 FOREST CUIiTUBE Aliffi 



add. The circular Asplenitim nidus, or great Nest 

 Fern, with fronds often six feet long, extends to the 

 eastern part of Gipps Land, but the equally grand Stag- 

 horn Fern ( Platycerium alcicorne and P. grande ) 

 seemingly cease to advance south of Ulawarra, while 

 in northern Queeensland Angiopteris evecta count 

 among the most gorgeous, and two slender Alsophilae 

 among the most graceful forms. The transhipment 

 of all these Ferns offer^ lucrative inducements to trad- 

 ers with foreign countries. Epiphytal Orchids, so 

 much in horticultural request, are less numerous in 

 these jungle-tracts than might have been anticipated, 

 those discovered not yet exceeding thirty in number. 

 Their isolated outposts advance in one representative 

 species — the Sarcochilus Gunnii — to Tasmania and the 

 vicinity of Cape Otway, and in another — Cymbidium 

 canaliculatum — toward Central Australia. The com- 

 parative scantiness of these epiphytes contrasts as 

 strangely with the Indian Orchid-vegetation as with 

 the exuberance of the lovely terrestrial co-ordinal 

 plants throughout most parts of e?;tra-tropical Austra- 

 lia, from whence one hundred and twenty well-defined 

 species are known. Still more remarkable is the al- 

 miost total absence of Orchids, both terrestrial and epi- 

 phytal, from north and north-west Australia, an ab- 

 sence for which in the central parts of the continent 

 aridity sufficiently accounts, but for which we have 

 no other explanation in the north than that the spe- 

 cies have as yet there effected but a limited migra- 

 tion. To the jungles and cedar- brushes — the latter 

 so named because they yield that furniture- wood so 

 famed as the Red Cedar (Cedrela taona, a tree identi- 

 cal as a species with the Indian plant, though slight- 



