CYATHEA AKBOKEA. 
137 
gular windings, with their small oval or oblong leaf- 
like fronds. The sides of the hare rocks, and the 
surfaces of the large loose stones, that lie in the 
woods, half concealed by bushes, are sprawled over 
by similar caulescent and clinging species of the great 
Fern tribe, which is estimated to constitute one ninth 
part of the whole vegetation of Jamaica. 
I will mention but one more member of this tribe, 
a Tree-fern of peculiar beauty, that I found growing 
in some abundance in a spot of more than usual 
gloom and grandeur, far on towards Rotherwood. 
The species was, I believe, Cyathea arhorea, taller 
and more graceful than the Alsophila of the moun- 
tain-brow. The slender stems, each marked with its 
oval, scale-like scars, and throwing out from its sum- 
mit its swelling cluster of leaf-bases so compact and 
so regular as to look like the elegantly fluted knob 
of some cast-iron pillar, again constricted before they 
spread abroad in a wide umbrella of finely cut foliage, 
— had an imposing effect here in the rather open 
woods, surrounded by the naked irregular trunks, 
moss-grown and studded with parasites, of the tall 
trees that towered up, and interwove their branches 
far above their heads, shutting out the sun, and 
almost the light. 
In a very dense, and nearly impenetrable, part of 
the bush that borders this lane, I found, about the 
end of February, some fine plants, in full flower, of 
that noble and magnificent terrestrial Orchid, Phajus 
TankervillicE.^ The flower-spikes, which rose to a 
* Though the extremity of the labellurn in the plants above 
mentioned, was of a deeper and more purple tint than in the pub- 
