There Was One Fern In Profusion, With From 90 To 130 Pair Of Pinnae On Each Frond; And The Fronds, Though Often Exceeding Five Feet In Length, Were Only Two Inches Broad (Nephrolepis Pectinata).

There were many prostrate trees, which nature has entirely covered with choice ferns, specially the rough stem of the tree-fern.

I counted seventeen varieties on one trunk, and on the whole obtained thirty-five specimens for my collection.

The forest soon became completely impenetrable, the beautiful Gleichenia Hawaiiensis forming an impassable network over all the undergrowth. And, indeed, without this it would have been risky to make further explorations, for often masses of wonderful matted vegetation sustained us temporarily over streams six or eight feet below, whose musical tinkle alone warned us of our peril. I shall never again see anything so beautiful as this fringe of the impassable timber belt. I enjoyed it more than anything I have yet seen; it was intoxicating, my eyes were "satisfied with seeing." It was a dream, a rapture, this maze of form and colour, this entangled luxuriance, this bewildering beauty, through which we caught bright glimpses of a heavenly sky above, while far away, below glade and lawn, shimmered in surpassing loveliness the cool blue of the Pacific. To me, with my hatred of reptiles and insects, it is not the least among the charms of Hawaii, that these glorious entanglements and cool damp depths of a redundant vegetation give shelter to nothing of unseemly shape and venomous proboscis or fang. Here, in cool, dreamy, sunny Onomea, there are no horrid, drumming, stabbing, mosquitoes as at Honolulu, to remind me of what I forget sometimes, that I am not in Eden.

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