A FIRST ASCENT. 
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hung with moss, orcliilla-lichen, or delicate epiphytic 
ferns. Other species of ferns grew luxuriantly at the 
side of the path, some of them actually British in their 
extended range. There were polypodies, holly ferns, 
bracken, maidenhair, identical apparently—I have 
since found at Kew they were actually the same—- 
Fig. 51.—Tree Fern (Lonchitis pubescens). 
with those we know in England. Unfamiliar, though, 
to our English scenes were the magnificent tree-ferns 
(of the species Lonchitis pubescens ), which rose grandly 
above the dense undergrowth, with fronds of a shiny 
bluish-green, whenever the pale green light of the 
forest fell athwart their downy leaflets or silky stems. 
