













112 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
Neilgherry Mountains; at Ghilan and Lazistan, according to Ru- 
precht; and in the island of Karek in the Persian Gulf. In Africa, 
it occurs in Algiers, Morocco, Egypt, Abyssinia, and in the Atlantic 
Isles—the Canaries, Madeira, Teneriffe, the Azores, and the Cape 
de Verds, in the northern hemisphere; and at the Cape of Good 
Hope, in the southern. In America, it is found in Mexico at 
Vera Cruz. In Australasia, it is found at Victoria and the Swan 
River, and in Tasmania and New Zealand. 
This plant succeeds with very little care from the cultivator, and 
like its West Indian ally, Gymnogramma cherophylla, also an 
annual, scatters its spores, and becomes, as it were, a weed in con- 
genial situations. Any light sandy soil seems to suit it. That 
in which it grows naturally in some parts of Jersey, and of which 
Mr. Ward kindly gave us a portion richly furnished with its spores, 
is a sandy loam; and scattered on the surface of a flower-pot, filled 
with similar soil, this earth yielded an abundant crop of plants. 
The young plants like shade, moisture, and a temperate climate, 
which conditions will ensure their successful growth. Propagation 
must either be trusted to the natural scattering of the spores, or a 
frond or two just arrived at maturity should be preserved and the 
spores deposited towards autumn in the situations where plants are 
required. We learn from several cultivators, who have grown 
the plant in cold situations, that the development has not gone 
beyond the production of the prothallus until the second year. Our 
plants, in a warm situation, have been strictly annual, that is, 
sown in autumn they have matured their fronds early in the 
following summer. In order to prevent the drying of the surface 
either before the spores have vegetated or subsequently, it is 
advisable to keep the soil covered by a bell-glass. The Gymno- 
gramma will succeed well by preparing a pot half-filled with 
drainage, and the rest with sandy loam and lumps of freestone, and 
then scattering the spores thinly over the surface, which is to be 
kept enclosed. No transplantation is then necessary, nor need the 
plants be disturbed unless they vegetate too thickly, when a portion 
may be carefully thinned away. 

