TRICHOMANES BADICANS. 289 



appearance, becomes more opaque, and of a whitish colour, 

 and assumes a form something like that of a champagne- 

 glass around the cluster of capsules ; the capsuliferous vein 

 passes through this cup, and projects beyond it, often ex- 

 ceeding it four times in length : it is the general custom of 

 botanists to speak of the cup as an involucre, and of the bristle- 

 like exserted vein as a receptacle. 



It has lately been supposed by many excellent botanists, that 

 there are two Irish species of Trichomanes, — the Killarney and 

 the Glouin Caragh plants : I will now proceed to lay before my 

 leaders all the information I can collect on the subject, and 

 then allow them to draw their own conclusions. The first no- 

 tice I find of the Glouin Caragh plant is by Dr. Mackay, at the 

 December Meeting of the Dublin Natural-History Society in 

 1842. " Mr. Mackay, of the College Botanic Garden, in com- 

 menting on the beautiful specimens of Trichomanes exhibited 

 by Mr. Andrews this evening, and on their finely developed 

 state of fructification, observed that the first discovery of this 

 rare and beautiful fern in Ireland was made by him in 1804, 

 about which time he forwarded specimens to Sir Edward Smith, 

 who figured it in the ' English Botany,' under the name of 

 Hymenophyllum alatum, from its winged stem. There was 

 also exhibited before the meeting a true specimen of the Ma- 

 deira plant, T. speciosum of Willdenow, which the late Right 

 Hon. George Knox had brought to him in 1811 : this plant, in 

 the short state of its receptacles, its triangular-shaped frond, 

 and its densely tripinnate pinnse, was identical with the beauti- 

 ful specimens in such fine fructification now before them of the 

 T. brevisetum of Killarney. The other specimens were those 

 of a discovery made by Mr. Andrews this autumn, in a district 

 remote from Killarney ; and he confessed that he had never 

 before seen such, either from their large size, or from the splen- 

 did state of fruit they exhibited. There was another pecuUar, 

 and, he considered, distinctive feature, in the lanceolate form 

 that all the fronds possessed, the bipinnate and not crowded 

 state of the pinnae, and the still more remarkable character 



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