306 
HYMENOPHYLLACE^. 
In texture as well as scent our British Trichomanes particu- 
larly resembles some of the marine Algce ; and I have found it 
to assume the same life-like appearance on immersion in water, 
after being kept perfectly dry for many years ; this property is 
also observable in Hymenophyllum, 
When I speak of its absence from Europe and European is- 
lands, with the single exception of Ireland, it must not be sup- 
posed that I have overlooked the record of its former occurrence 
in Yorkshire. Doubt and difficulty seem to beset this record 
on every side, yet in a work professing to be a history of Bri- 
tish Ferns, I believe it advisable to publish all the information 
that can be collected on the subject. In Bay’s ‘ Synopsis ’ we 
find a figure^ so like some of the specimens gathered near Kil- 
larney, as to have convinced all subsequent botanists that it 
was intended for the present plant : there is a second figuref 
which professes to represent the young state of the plant, but 
which not only carries with it no evidence of identity, but is so 
totally unlike the seedling plants of Trichomanes reared by 
Mr. Andrews of Dublin, that a careful observer must hesitate 
long before admitting that the two plants represented in the 
‘Synopsis’ have any connexion with each other. The plants re- 
presented in both these figures were “ found by Dr. Richardson 
at Belbank, scarce half a mile from Bingley, at the head of a 
remarkable spring, and nowhere else that he knows of.”J The 
description, quoted at length below, § seems, as far as it goes, 
tolerably applicable to the present plant; but it should be ob- 
served that neither the figure nor the description notices the 
fruit which forms so important a diagnostic of Trichomanes 
speciosiim. The second notice of this locality is in Bolton’s 
* Syn. tab. iii. fig. 3. f 1. c. fig. 4. f Syn. 127. 
§ Filix humilis repens foliis pellucidis et splenderitibus, caule alata D. Rich- 
ards. An Onopteris major Tab. I c. 796 ? mas. Ger. 975 ? Caules singulari 
buic plantee alati sunt et virides, nisi inferius, ubi ex fusco nigrescunt. Radix 
villosa est et hirsuta, repens, quod non exprimitur in figura Tabernaemontani, 
ipsam alias plantam satis bene referente. Seminalia nondum comparuere, quo 
minus constat, an eadem sit base planta cum Filicula pyxidifera Plum. Til. 
Amer. Tab. 50, cui sane simillima est. Folia tenuia, pellucida et splendentia, 
coloris saturate virentis. — Syn. 127. 
