TPtEE-FEENS. 
69 
circle of nearly twenty feet in diameter. There is 
no very close similarity between a Tree-fern and a 
Palm in appearance ; there is a remarkable lightness 
and voluptuousness, if I may be allowed the expres- 
sion, in the filagree work of the one, produced by 
the minute subdivision of the immense frond (of 
which every one may form a feeble notion from the 
commonest ferns of our heaths), that contrasts with 
the stiff, simply-pinnate or fan-shaped leaves of the 
Palms ; yet these latter have a beauty and elegance 
of their own. 
When the emotion produced by the first sight of 
these interesting plants had subsided, I still found 
much to admire in a more minute examination. The 
formidable prickles studding the knobbed bases of the 
fronds, that swelled out around the summit of the 
trunk, like the bulging branches of a candlestick ; 
the elongated scars on the stem, that marked the 
position of the fallen fronds ; and especially the 
basal part, that looked like a mass of intertwining 
wire, black and shining, as if running down with the 
concentrated moisture of those damp woods; — all 
were novel, curious, and pleasing. 
URANIA SLOANUS. 
Leaving, for the present, our description of this 
elevated region, which on a future occasion we may 
still further pursue, I will call my reader’s attention 
to one of the most brilliantly lovely of animal forms ; 
of which this spot forms one of the favourite localities. 
I speak of Urania, an insect which on account of its 
