FEEN3 AND MOSSES. 43 
more sparingly. A similar assignment and restriction is 
discoverable throughout Wales. Botanists who visit the 
mountainous regions of Carnarvonshire often meet with 
specimens rooted among stones, which some convulsive 
movement of the earth has shattered in times long past ; let 
them not, however,. expect to find an equal abundance of 
the Parsley-leaved fern on the sides or summit of Cader 
Idris, or in the wild and beautiful localities of Dolgelly, 
Aberglaslyn, Stranberris, or Beddgelert, with its rushing 
waters, and rocks shaded with high trees, where, as tradition 
says, the last of the Welsh bards used to wake the echoes 
with wild and mournful melody ; nor yet at Llanberris, 
Tan-y-Bwlch, and Llyn Tregarien. Newman reports, that 
ho noted at least forty localities of the Parsley -fern during 
the course of a pedestrian excursion in the Highlands, but 
invariably in small tufts, on old walls, or among stones ; 
these localities occurred in the mountainous parts of Aber- 
deenshire, Perthshire, and Argyleshire. In Ireland, the 
Mourne mountains, County Down, and the liberties of Car- 
rickfergus, County Antrim, are mentioned as habitats of 
the same fern, though sparingly distributed. 
Allosorus crispus is the name assigned by Bernhardi, 
Sprengel, Sadler, and Presl, to the Rock Brakes, or Parsley- 
fern, the Pteris crispa of Smith and Withering. It has been 
rendered the type of a new genus by three eminent bota- 
nists; Bernhardi gave it the appellation A llosorus: Desveux, 
that of Phorobolus ; Brown, that of Oryptofframma ; Lin- 
i!03us called it Asmunda crispa ; Roth, Onocleoides ; Gray, 
Slegania Onoclea crispa. Young botanists will find it need- 
ful to remember these dissimilar names. 
The root is fibrous ; the fibres numerous and tough, and 
tenaciously adhering to the wildest growing -places ; hence 
the Parsley-fern, though slight and delicately formed, is 
enabled to retain its position on the side of mountains over 
which the rains and storms ot winter prevail unchecked. 
The fronds, or leaves, appear in May, and disappear in 
