WOODWARDIA. 
77 
failure of the ordinary method of reproduction is often to be noticed in cases where, as in 
the present, the plant is propagated by extraordinary means. The typical form of 
W. orientalis is equally remarkable in the respect just mentioned, although not invariably 
so. The peculiarity has long been known, and did not escape the wondering comments of 
our last century naturalists. Thus the great John Ray, in the supplement to his large folio 
“ Historia Plantarum ” (1704), describes it under the name of “ Filix Emuyaca pinnis proliferis 
mire ornatis,” and thus refers to its peculiar mode of increase: — “Verum, quod mirum videtur, 
et huic speciei ex omnibus netas unquam vidimus proprium, ex ipsis foliis, et quantum discerque 
licuit seminalibus lineolis, enascuntur plantulae innumerae fere, denso velut cespite totam foliorum 
superficiem operientes.” There are several specimens, collected in the East during the early 
part of the last century, in the Sloane Herbarium, which is, historically, one of the most important 
PORTION OF FROND OF WOODWARDIA ORIENTALIS (NAT. SIZE). 
(a) Under-side of Pinna. ( b ) Upper-side of Pinna. ( Both magnified.') 
of the collections in the National Herbarium at the British Museum. This herbarium is con- 
tained in about three hundred volumes, for the most part folio, and of considerable thickness, 
and contains collections from all the botanical explorers of the latter part of the sixteenth 
and earlier portion of the seventeenth century. No complete list either of the collectors 
or of the plants contained in this herbarium has been published ; but a careful working up 
of the specimens would no doubt bring to light many new and interesting facts which are 
at present buried in these ponderous tomes. At Sir Hans Sloane’s death, in 1753, this 
collection was, in accordance with the provisions of his will, offered to the nation for a 
large sum : the terms were at once agreed to, and the plants thus acquired formed the basis 
of the British Museum Herbarium. Among the specimens of Woodwardia orientalis contained 
in the Sloane collection is included that from which our figure is taken, with others apparently 
from Father Kamel (or Camelli), a Portuguese Jesuit missionary, who collected numerous 
plants in the Philippic Islands, and particularly at Luzon, where he was stationed for many 
years, towards the end of the sixteenth century. He paid much attention to botany, and 
was in correspondence with Ray, Petiver, and other botanists ; he was also a good artist, 
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