ADIANTUM. 
173 
the property of repelling water. It is, in fact, impossible 
to wet the surface of their pinnules^ when the fronds are 
in a fresh state and in good health, the water being cast off 
as though from a waxy surface. 
Adiantum Capillus-Veneris, Linnceus. 
The Maidenhair Fern . (Plate XVI. fig. 1.) 
A small evergreen species, furnished with a very short 
creeping stem, which is clothed with small black scales, 
and bears delicate, graceful, somewhat drooping fronds, of 
six inches to a foot high. These fronds are usually of an 
irregularly ovate form, sometimes elongate, occasionally 
approaching to linear. When highly developed, the fronds 
are about thrice pinnate ; but the less vigorous fronds are 
usually only twice pinnate, with alternate pinnrn and 
pinnules ; and sometimes fronds are found which are only 
once pinnate. The ultimate pinnules, or leaflets, are very 
irregular in shape, but for the most part have a wedge- 
shaped or tapering base, and a more or less rounded and 
oblique apex, and they have generally some variation of a 
fan-shaped or rhomboidal outline. The margin is more 
or less deeply lobed, the apices of the lobes in the fertile 
pinnules being reflexed and changed into membranous in- 
