1878.] 
NEPHEOLEPIS DUFFII. 
171 
Figs and second-crop Grapes can be fully ma¬ 
tured. Cold orchard-houses will grow Peaches 
on the wall, and some of the good old kinds as 
standards. But Plums (and how delicious some 
of the new introductions are !) can be had with 
certainty and in profusion, and are free from 
all the disappointments which attend Peach- 
culture. 
Allow me the detail of a discovery which 
has wonderfully lessened the labour of my 
houses, by the certain and easy destruction 
of all the pests which no watching has ever 
before extirpated. It is a tobacco-wash, sold 
by Messrs. Griffiths and Avis, of Coventry. 
One pint to two gallons of water, applied forci¬ 
bly through a small powerful syringe, clears 
off every variety of aphis, and the other plagues 
which belong to glass structures.—G. D. 
NEPHROLEPIS DUFFII. 
very distinct and apparently sterile 
>hrolepis was obtained from Duke of 
•k’s Island by Mr. Duff, an employe 
of the Sydney Botanic Garden, after whom it 
has been named, and proves to bo a very 
elegant addition to our stove ferns. 
The fronds are numerous, tufted, herbaceous 
in texture, about 2 feet long, with a stipe of C or 
8 inches long, a narrow linear lamina of about 
a foot long, and a multifidly branched apex of 4 
to G inches long. The lamina and branches are 
about half-an-inch broad, pinnate, the pinnae 
small alternate or nearly opposite, growing in 
pairs, that is, two are attached side by side to 
the rachis and overlap each other, about a 
quarter of an inch long, rounded, somewhat 
broader than long, crenately toothed, and 
sterile in all the specimens we have seen. The 
lower pinnae are distant, smaller ; those of the 
apical branches especially more crowded. The 
