THE RUE-LEAVED SPLEENWORT. 123 
asthmas, obstructions of the liver and spleen, and in scorbutic 
complaints, but is at present out of repute.” 
Some cultivators are tolerably successful with this plant, but it is 
not generally found easy of culture. Those appear to succeed the 
best, who keep their Ferns drier than usual. The Wall Rue 
requires a very porous soil of sandy loam, with a large proportion 
of old mortar and fragments of soft brick, and to have the watering- 
pot applied very cautiously to the soil, and perhaps never to the 
leaves. The plants, too, ought to have an open or elevated site, 
especially if in a house or frame, so that a continual evaporation 
may relieve them of the moisture which has been applied to them. 
The plants are increased by division. It has been suggested by 
Mr. G. W. Johnson, that the best mode of raising this Fern, which 
is difficult to transplant, on account of its roots becoming so firmly 
fixed in the rocks or walls on which it grows, would be to collect 
the spores, and to sow them in a pot of carefully prepared soil. Old 
lime rubbish and sandy loam are the best ingredients for this 
. purpose. The pot should be kept moist in a cold frame or green- 
house, without watering over its surface, until the spores have 
vegetated: this may be secured by covering the pot with a glass, 
and setting it in a feeder filled with water. 
There are comparatively few variations of this species yet noticed. 
Like many other ferns, it occasionally produces a few dichotomous 
fronds, but such plants do not become entirely or constantly dichoto- 
mous. The-other forms are enumerated below :— 
1. pinnatum (M.). This form is only once pinnate, and is fur- 
nished with several rhomboidal pinne, which are stalked, and 
crenato-dentate in the upper or larger half. It was found at 
Mucruss, Killarney, by Dr. Allchin. 
2. trifidum (M.). A small pinnate form, the lower pinne on long- 
ish footstalks, small, dividing nearly to the base into three small 
wedge-shaped segments, which are blunt and scarcely toothed at the 
apex. It has been sent from Castle Malgwyn, Pembrokeshire, by 
Mr. W. Hutchison. 
PERSE E 

