PERPLEXITY. 73 
search for it somewhere in the torrent bed of the 
West Lyn, as it takes its way amidst rock and 
forest tree, under Lyn Cliff, to the sea at Lyn- 
mouth. Able-bodied must they be who venture on 
the like errand ; able to contend with a down-hill 
rush from Lynton, and an up-hill scramble amidst 
moss-covered rock and leaping waters ; now 
steadying oneself with a branch of an overhanging 
tree, through which the sunshine gleams ; now 
warily stepping over fissures and chasms, with the 
river bubbling beneath. And then the grand dis- 
coveries and the failures ! The learned way in 
which one strives to palm off some pretty moss 
upon oneself as the veritable Tunbridgense, or at 
the very least Wilsoni, with the pleasant and 
extremely logical argument, " Filmy Ferns are 
moss-like plants — this is a moss-like plant : there- 
fore this is a Hymenophyllum." And then the 
false argument leading to the true conclusion, for 
at last in my hand is a large mass of moss-like 
plants, and lo ! it is Hymenophyllum Wilsoni : 
and why is it not Tunbridgense ? I have found 
