62 DESCRIPTIONS OF N.Z. FERNS. 



clearly two-valved ; but this last characteristic is not invariable, the larger frond on 

 plate having entire edges to its involucres, as has also a frond kindly sent me by Mrs. 

 Mason. The former was gathered on the West Coast of the Middle Island, and 

 curiously enough agrees generally far better with Professor Kirk's description of the 

 fern, than that shown in his accompanying drawing, which is copied alongside of it, 

 and which looks as if taken from a mis-shapen frond. No one seems to have grown 

 this fern ; indeed, very few coUeftors have ever seen it. When lately at Christchurch 

 and Dunedin, I could only find one person who had a correft specimen. Others had 

 merely peculiar forms of other ferns, which they had gathered thinking they might be 

 it, and one gentleman actually classed it by mistake as a form of " Hymenophyllum 

 Tunbridgense," in a published list of the Canterbury ferns. 



The following form a second class of Hymenophylla with hairy fronds and often 

 hairy or indented edges. They mostly occur in colder situations than the former^ and 

 the hairiness seems a protection from the cold. 



HYMENOPHYLLUM SCABRUM. (Hi-men-o-fil-lum sca-brum.) 



PLATE XVII., NO. 4. 



This fern is found only in New Zealand, and has a slender creeping rhizome, 

 usually smooth or but slightly hairy. Stipes not winged, or only slightly so towards 

 top ; densely covered with long very dark brown or black hairs when young, as are 

 also the rachis and costae. Many of these hairs however fall off, leaving small tuber- 

 cles in their places. Rachis winged towards the top. Frond varying from broadly 

 triangular to oval or narrowly lanceolate in shape, and from four inches to two feet in 

 length, the long fronds being always narrow with the pinnae far apart ; tri-pinnatifid. 

 Primary pinnae well apart, and very triangular in shape. Secondary ones close together, 

 lanceolate and deeply cut into narrow lobes. Texture, membranous ; colour, dark 

 olive green. Sori large and numerous, enclosed in terminal involucres wider than the 

 lobes, and usually with toothed lips. There are sometimes a few hairs on the surfaces. 

 This fern may at once be recognised by its dark colour, and hairy or rough stipes. It 

 only grows among moss on tree-trunks, or rotten logs, in the very wettest places in 

 the bush, such as by streams in deep gullies, or on flats where water lies during great 

 part of the year, and the air is fairly saturated with moisture. In faft, the damper the 

 place the better and finer the plant grows. In warm but damp gullies I have found 

 the plant almost hairless, but rough to the touch, the hairs having fallen. It will 

 succeed in cultivation under similar conditions to the other Hymenophylla previously 

 described, but must be put in the shadiest and dampest case, and dampest part of that, 

 as it shrivels immediately in a dry atmosphere, though it will stand great cold. I have 

 seen it stiff with ice, when all the surrounding trees were hung with icicles two or 

 three feet long, yet it took no harm. Besides the differences of size and form, there 



