APPENDIX A. 
403 
1. Trichomanes speciosum ; (the T. hrevisetum of most English botanical 
works). This, the most lovely of our cellular plants, is the most intractable 
under ordinary methods of treatment. Loddiges, who have had it repeatedly, 
never could keep it alive and Baron Fischer, the superintendant of the bo- 
tanical establishments of the Emperor of Russia, when he saw the plant grow- 
ing in one of my cases, took off his hat, made a low bow to it, and said — “You 
have been my master all the days of my life.” Whence then arises the great 
difficulty of cultivating this plant ? It is simply owing to the occasional dry- 
ness of the atmosphere. Place the plant in one of my cases, and thus secure 
a constantly humid atmosphere around it, and it will grow as well in the most 
smoky parts of London as on the rocks at Killarney, or in the laurel forests of 
Teneriffe ^ 
Miraturque novas frondes." 
This plant lived for about four years in a wide-mouthed bottle, covered with 
oiled silk, during which time it required no water ; but having outgrown its 
narrow limits it was removed to some rock-work in my largest fern-house, where 
it now remains, covered with a bell-glass, and occasionally watered. 
2. Hymenophyllum, with one or two species of Junyermannia and Mosses, 
These were planted nine years since, in the bottle in which my first experimental 
plants sprang up and perished. The soil is a mixture of peat mould, loam 
and sand, with as much moisture as it would retain when water was poured 
through it. This same water has served for the nourishment of the plants up 
to the present time, nor am I at present able to assign any limit to their exist- 
ence in this state. The mould appears to be as moist and the plants as fresh, 
as on the day they were enclosed ; and when we reflect upon their independent 
state, we may, without any great stretch of imagination, carry our minds back 
to the primaeval condition of vegetation, when “ the Lord God had not caused 
it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But 
there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” 
This will be a fitting place to make mention of a small but most interesting 
bottle which I received in October, 1837, from Mr. Newman, superintendant 
of the Botanic Garden at the Mauritius. The bottle was filled with two or 
three specimens of a little species of Gratiola and of Cotula, and tightly co- 
vered with painted canvas. The plants were in full flower. I placed them in 
a window with a southern aspect : they remained in vigour for six or seven 
weeks, when one after the other declined, and eventually all perished without 
ripening any seed, in eonsequence of the too great humidity of the atmosphere. 
Before this took place I observed, as in my first experiment, several seedling 
ferns making their appearance between the internal surface of the glass and 
* Mr. Mackay, of Dublin, I believe is almost the only person who has succeeded in growing this 
plant well ; and to him I am indebted for my present specimens, and for numerous other kind con- 
tributions. 
2 d2 
