CULTIVATION. 
359 
receive but little sun in winter, and are densely shaded 
in summer, all filled with patches of fine fronds, of a 
number of different species, varying from the delicate 
hair-like Tricliomanes tricoideum, not more than two 
inches high, to the robust T. anceps and T. radicans. 
They are grown in square shallow pans and boxes, 
well drained in the ordinary way, and having about 
two inches of peat soil mixed with nearly half its bulk 
of sand and small broken potsherds ; but soft sand- 
stone is best. For the creeping sorts the soil should 
be raised in the form of a mound, and for those that 
have long-extending sarmentums, if soft stone cannot 
be had, it is desirable to invert a pan or common deep 
pot, covering it with a layer of soil, as already ex- 
plained, to which the plant will cling, and soon form a 
green hillock : junks of wood answer the purpose ; 
but in a moist, close, and warm atmosphere, fungi 
and insects breed, and in a short time the wood 
decays, causing unnecessary disturbance of the whole 
mass of the plant. 
The singular genus Lygodium, and its ally Lygo- 
dictyon, grow naturally in firm soils, generally amongst 
trees and bushes, their why, flexile, climbing fronds 
growing over and involving everything within their 
reach in the most intricate complexity. In most 
Ferns, the whole of the divisions of the fronds are 
formed in the nascent or bud state, and are unfolded 
as the fronds elongate ; when the whole of the deve- 
loped parts are unfolded, the frond ceases further ex- 
tension. This is, however, not the case in Lygodium, 
Salpichlcena, Pellea jlexuosa, Gymnogramma flexuosa, 
Odontosoria aculeata, and a few others, the fronds of 
which are of indefinite extension, their apices con- 
