167 



of Caripe. These palms with pinnated and 

 thorny leaves formed a pleasing contrast with 

 the fern trees. One of the latter, the cyathea 

 speciosa *, rises to the height of more than thir- 

 ty five feet, which is prodigious for plants of 

 this family. We discovered here, and in the 

 valley «of Caripe, five new kinds of arborescent 

 ferns -§> : in the time of Linnaeus, botanists knew 

 no more than four on both continents. 



We observed, that the fern trees are in gene- 

 ral much more rare than the palm-trees. Na- 

 ture has confined them to temperate, moist, and 

 shady places. They shun the direct rays of 

 the sun, and while the pumos, the corypha of 

 the steppes, and other palms of America, flou- 

 rish in the naked and burning plains, these 

 ferns with arborescent trunks, which at a dis- 

 tance look like palm-trees, preserve the charac- 

 ter and habits of the cryptogamous plants. 

 They love solitary places, little light, a moist, 

 noil : ■ ■ I f* h i ) i >1 



* Perhaps a hemitelia of Robert Brown. The trunk 

 alone is from 22 to 24 feet long. This and the cyathea ex- 

 celsa of the Isle of Bourbon are the most majestic of all the 

 fern-trees described by botanists. The total number of these 

 gigantic cryptogamous plants amounts at present to 25 spe- 

 cies, that of the palm-trees to 80. With the cyathea grow 

 on the mountain of Santa Maria rhexia juniperina, chiococ- 

 ca racemossa, and commelina spicata. % 



4 Meniscium arborescens, aspidium caducum, a. rostra- 

 turn, cyathea villosa, and c. speciosa. 



