The forward instructions were not showing up on the forward form.

The forward instructions were not showing up on the forward form. The following needs to be added to the forward_form function:

$form['message']['instructions'] = array(
    '#value' => variable_get('forward_instructions', ''),
);

This should be added between lines 304 and 305 or between:

if ($nodeapi == TRUE) {
    $form['message'] = array(
      '#type' => 'fieldset',
      '#title' => t('Forward this page to a friend'),
      '#description' => '',
      '#collapsed' => true,
      '#collapsible' => true,
    );
  }

and:

$form['message']['yemail'] = array(
    '#type' => 'textfield',
    '#title' => t('Your Email'),
    '#default_value' => $user->mail,
    '#size' => 58,
    '#maxlength' => 256,
    '#description' => null,
    '#attributes' => null,
    '#required' => true,
  );

note: the text in the forward instructions must be wrapped by p or div tags in order to display properly.