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This and the Cyathea excelsa of the Mauritius, are the most majestic of all the fern-trees described by botanists. The total number of these gigantic cryptogamous plants amounts at present to 25 species, that of the palm-trees to 80. We observed that the fern-trees are in general much more rare than the palm-trees. Nature has confined them to temperate, moist, and shady places.
The English residents took refuge on board the shipping, and two days afterwards the Maoris sacked and burned the town with the exception of the two churches, and a few houses contiguous to the property of the Roman Catholic Mission. In some of the ravines two species of tree-ferns of the genus Cyathea grow luxuriantly in the moist clayey soil.
Ruiz and Pavon, comes from the Aspidium coriaceum, Willd. These palms with pinnated and thorny leaves formed a pleasing contrast to the fern-trees. One of the latter, the Cyathea speciosa,* grows to the height of more than thirty-five feet, a prodigious size for plants of this family. The trunk alone is from 22 to 24 feet long.
If they sometimes descend towards the sea-coast, it is only under cover of a thick shade. The old trunks of the cyathea and the meniscium are covered with a carbonaceous powder, which, probably being deprived of hydrogen, has a metallic lustre like plumbago.
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