46 DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 



absence of hairs ; but they are always careful to lay the white side downwards, lest 

 they should be annoyed by the spores blowing about as the capsules burst. They also 

 used it when they wanted to surprise an enemy in time of war. During the day they 

 would make a track through the forest, and mark it by laying down fronds of this fern 

 with the white side upwards and the tips pointing in the direction in which they wanted 

 to go. Whether there is some slight phosphorescence about these fronds is uncertain, 

 but a track thus marked is distinftly traceable on the darkest night ; and thus the 

 natives could make their way through the bush, and attack the enemy's pa in the grey 

 dawn of morning. I have often marked a trail through the bush in the same way and 

 have found it very easy to retrace. This fern is very good to cultivate, and its silvery 

 under surface makes it rather an attraftive one for the purpose. What appears to be 

 a variety of this fern has been called by Mr. Colenso " Cyathea tricolor." The points 

 of difference are its rachides, being yellow above and furry below with some red scars 

 or blotches, the bluer tint of the under-surface of the fronds, its dwarf compact form 

 and more drooping habit of growth. It occurs on spurs of the Ruahine mountains 

 about Norsewood and Dannevirke. 



GENUS HEMITELIA. (He-mit-e-le-a.) 



So called from a Greek word signifying half-finished. This genus has the sori 

 globose, dorsal on a vein or veinlet. Receptacle elevated. Involucre a scale situated 

 beneath the sorus, and varying in size and texture, often indistinct and often deciduous, 

 whence the name. Arborescent. Fronds ample, pinnate or decompound. Our New 

 Zealand Hemitelia Smithii belongs to the sub-genus " Amphicosmia," which is 

 distinguished by having the veins all free. 



HEMITELIA SMITHII. (He-mit-e-lea Smith-e-i.) 



THE " SOFT TREE FERN." 

 PLATE IX., Kos. 4 and 5. 



So named in compliment to Mr. Smith, of the Royal Gardens, at Kew. Was 

 called " Cyathea Smithii" in Dr. Hooker's New Zealand flora, and elsewhere, and is con- 

 fined to New Zealand. There are either two distinfl; ferns called by this name, or two 

 very distinct forms of one plant. The one, which is common from Wellington to 

 Taranaki, as well as on the West Coast of the Middle Island and near Dunedin, has a 

 moderately stout caudex, rising to a height of thirty feet or more with a clean fibrous 

 exterior not disfigured by bases of old stipites. The light brown straight stipites and 

 rachides of old fronds, however, hang around it in large numbers just below the crown. 

 The fronds are seldom, if ever, more than five feet long, and broadly lanceolate. 

 Stipes short and, as well as the rachis, light brown, smooth, or only slightly tubercled 

 below, with a few scattered scales on the sides ; and lighter, and slightly woolly or 



