158 
New Zealand Ferns 
many plants, I am convinced that it is sufficiently differ- 
ent to be classed as a true species, possibly connected 
with the other by intermediates. 
So ill bad been my success in looking for this species 
that, in my secret heart, I bad begun to doubt its exist- 
ence, and only included it in my first edition out of res- 
pect for the botanists. But there is always hope-even 
for the blindest. After 40 years my eyes have been 
opened. 
One day I was bunting in a rough piece of ground near 
Auckland for N otlioclaena distans. I had not walked a 
hundred yards when I came to a chaos of rocks and loose 
scoria; but made beautiful with moss and lichen, lovely 
sprays of Asplenium fl abb elli folium down in the inter- 
stices, quantities of Pellaea rotundifolia everywhere, 
and handsome patches of Polypodium Billardieri crown- 
ing the weather-beaten crags with masses of broad 
bright-green fronds. A dark-leaved plant at my feet 
caught my eye, evidently a seedling tree or bush. I was 
about to pass on, when a second glance arrested me — 
the tops of the sprays looked uncommonly like ferns, yet 
the leaves, wide and crowded together on the stalks, 
were unlike any that I knew. To make quite certain l 
went down on my knees and parted the foliage with my 
hands. The sight of a small hairy crook made me catch 
my breath — it was undoubtedly a fern! But what? I 
knew none like it. Then it dawned on my slow under- 
standing that this must be P. falcata, whose occurrence 
in New Zealand I had always doubted. Needless to say, 
I was converted on the spot. The leaves were so entirely 
different from those of P. rotundifolia that there was no 
possibility of confounding the two. 
If planted in leaf mould in a dry sunny locality, it is 
easily grown. 
A wide-spread species, extending to Australia, the 
Malay Archipelago, and India. 
