OSMUND FERNS. 



41 



the entire height of the plant does not exceed 4 or 5 feet, 

 but it sometimes reaches from 8 to 10 feet. Mr. Andrews 

 remarked, at a meeting of the JSTatural History Society of 

 Dublin, that he had seen specimens 11 feet high growing 

 round the margins of the islands, which were of limestone 

 formation, opposite Muckross, Killarney. The root-stock 

 or rhizome lengthens year by year as the termimal fronds 

 decay, so that a kind of stem is at length formed of from 

 10 to 18 inches in height. The fronds are always pro- 

 duced from the crown of this root-stock, growing in the 

 spring and decaying in the autumn, so that in winter only 

 the naked stumps are to be seen. The general outline of 

 the fronds is lanceolate, bearing several pairs of oppositely 

 diverging pinnce ; or — what we may be pardoned for say- 

 ing — resemble opposite pairs of pinnate leaves, with leaf- 

 lets all along on each side of the axis, and one at the end. 

 These leaflets, or, to write more correctly, pinnules, are 

 nearly sessile and oblong, with an indefinite ear-like lobe 

 at the base, blunt at the tips, and serrated or bluntly 

 toothed along the margin. Some of these fronds always 

 remain barren ; in fact, only a few of them are fertile. 

 Those privileged fronds which bear the fruit have the 

 upper portion metamorphosed. The pinned are shortened 

 and contracted at first, appearing as if " blighted ; " ulti- 

 mately the whole upper portion of the frond assumes a 

 rusty brown colour, and seems converted into a panicle 

 of closely packed spore-cases, each of which is borne on [> 

 short stalk, and opens vertically into two valves. (Plate 

 L, fig. 1.) 



The Eoyal Fern occurs in boggy or marshy situations 

 throughout Grreat Britain and Ireland, and is, in fact, to 

 be found all over Europe in favourable situations. It is 

 exceedingly luxuriant in the Lakes of Kfflarney, where it 

 forms one of the striking features of the district. Dr. 

 "Withering, after enumerating the various stations which 

 he had recorded for this fern, adds : " Though before not 

 to be found for many miles around Birmingham, in the 

 year 1802 it appeared on a butt on Moseley Common, 

 artificially made with mud from a deep pit, in which the 



