340 Directions for raising Ferns/row Seed. 



"a new Diplazium. These reached Liverpool July the tenth, 

 1818, their seeds being immediately sown, had produced 

 young plants by the eighth of September. A small Fern 

 from Sicily, with several others of this tribe, collected in the 

 Brazils, by William Swainson, junior, Esq. afforded ripe 

 seeds, which being sown in the spring of 1818, had partly 

 vegetated, and in September had produced Poly podium decu- 

 manum* as well as Acrostichum calomelanos. Mr. Shepherd 

 obtained two plants of the latter from seeds brushed from 

 the specimens in the Herbarium of Dr. John Reinhold 

 Forster, now belonging to the Botanic garden at Liver- 

 pool, and perhaps fifty years old. He made the experiment 

 on other Ferns in that collection, but without success, which 

 indeed is not wonderful. 



The seeds of this order of plants are of course liable to 

 damage from damp, or other accidents, like those of plants 

 in general. Jt seems moreover that they are very soon shed 

 by the bursting of their capsules, so that they are more likely 

 to be found in such specimens as are just beginning to turn 

 brown in their fructification, than from others more ad- 

 vanced. 



Mr. Shepherd remarks, that having sown seeds from a 

 very small undulated variety of Scolopendrium vulgar e, he 

 found the fronds of the young plants as much undulated as 

 those of the parent. 



The following is a list of Ferns which this ingenious and 

 assiduous young man has given to me as raised by himself 

 from seed in the Liverpool garden. His botanical accuracy 



* Willdenow Species Plantarum, Vol. v. page 170. 



