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The pinnae, which are small, of different sizes, rounded and serrated at the edges, are produced in pairs, one overlying the other, and, curiously enough, those on the top are the largest. The pairs are sometimes opposite, but mostly alternate, distant toward the base, approximate higher up, and crowded and quite overlapping in the crested portion of the frond.
Among the many crested ferns in cultivation, this, of which the annexed is an illustration, is one of the most distinct; so different indeed it is from the type, that it is questionable if it really is a form of it; the most essential characteristic, that of the fructification at the extreme edge of the lobes of the pinnae, is altogether absent, and the whole habit of the plant is also thoroughly distinct.
In the barren pinnae which are only situated on the lower portion of the frond, and which generally are only few in number, the furcation is rudimentary; in the fertile pinnae it is twice and even three times repeated in the extremities of the first division, becoming more complex toward the point of the frond, where it often forms quite a large tassel, whose weight gives the fronds quite an elegant, arching habit.
We turned, in wholesome dread, to the white beach outside, and picked up and, alas! wreck, everywhere wreck shells old friends in the cabinets at home as earnests to ourselves that all was not a dream: delicate prickly Pinnae; 'Noah's-arks' in abundance; great Strombi, their lips and outer shell broken away, disclosing the rosy cameo within, and looking on the rough beach pitifully tender and flesh-like; lumps and fragments of coral innumerable, reminding us by their worn and rounded shapes of those which abound in so many secondary strata; and then hastened on board the boat; for the sun had already fallen, the purple night set in, and from the woods on shore a chorus of frogs had commenced chattering, quacking, squealing, whistling, not to cease till sunrise.
In it, the pinnae are set on all at the same distance apart, and all in the same plane, in opposite sides of the stalk, giving to the whole foliage a grand simplicity; and producing, when the curving leaf-points toss in the breeze, that curious appearance, which I mentioned in an earlier chapter, of green glass wheels with rapidly revolving spokes.
Its most distinct characteristic is the furcation of the pinnae, which are all of the same dimensions, whether sterile or fertile; they are all opposite and closely set along the mid-rib, whereas those of N. davallioides are set much further apart.
These flat wedge-shaped sheets, often six feet across, and the oblong pinnae, some three feet long by six inches to a foot in breadth, make admirable thatch; and on emergency, as we often saw that day, good umbrellas.
The editor of "Loudon's Magazine," in a paragraph appended to this article, says: "We have examined the Wrens' nests sent; their staple materials are moss, feathers, and hair. Into the moss on the exterior of the nest are woven a more or less perfect but feeble frond or two, and separate pinnae as well of Aspidium Filix-Mas, and leaves of apple, elm, and oak trees.
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