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trees and hangs down in festoons hundreds of feet long, and the 

 wonderful richness and variety of the Hymenopliyllums, alone 

 would charm you. Imagine the ground literally carpeted with 

 these rare and lovely gems of the fern world, and you will have 

 some idea of what a beautiful sight it is with these plants in such 

 profusion. Loxoma Cunninghamii, the only one of its class 

 known to occur anywhere in the world, and the oldest fern of 

 which geology has revealed the existence, is found growing north 

 of Auckland. Then Todea superba, or Prince of Wales' feather, 

 as it is sometimes called, is not the least among the fern beauties 

 of New Zealand, if not the world. Nothing more beautiful can be 

 imagined than this fern as seen growing in its native wilds. The 

 kidney fern, too, (Trichomanes reniforme) and the fan fern 

 (Scliicaca dichotoma) both so peculiarly shaped, and quaint look- 

 ing, tend to stamp the ferns of New Zealand as something out of 

 the ordinary in the. world's list of these lovely plants. 



Nor did the natives find them as useless as many of their 

 whiie brothers suppose them to be; from the trunks of the tree 

 ferns he cut slabs to build his houses ; Pteris aqidlina, so widely 

 distributed all over the North Island, was a staple article of food, 

 being dried and the roots pounded and made into flour ; with the 

 long stems of Lygodium articulation he bound the thatch on the 

 roof of his house, constructed fishing nets, and made fishing 

 hooks, out of the naturally curved stems of the same p\a.nt,Pteris 

 pus tula turn provided him with means for perfuming his oil, and in 

 many other ways the ferns were made to minister to his comfort. 



The earlier visits of botanists to New Zealand was between 

 the years 1769 and 1777, when the great navigator Captain Cook, 

 made three voyages to these islands, and he was accompanied by 

 Sir Joseph Banks, George Foster, Dr. Solander, Reinwold, Dr. 

 Sparman, and Dr. Anderson, as naturalists, who collected most of 

 the ferns which grow in these islands. After their time the 

 islands were explored by many French, English and Australian 

 botanists, notably D'Urville, Hooker and Cunningham, with the 

 result of adding more ferns to the list, and since then (1841) 

 many more ferns have been discovered through the labors of 

 botanists and scientific men resident in the colony. The labors of 

 all these explorers have been collected and arranged by Dr. 



