NEW SPECIES OF CYATHEA. 
By Edwin Bingham Copeland. 
{From the Bureau of Education, Manila, P. I.) 
In the recent preparation of a compreliensive treatment of the Cya- 
thew of Asia and Malaya, I have found a number of species apparently 
hitherto unknown and, as it is desired for the sake of convenient 
general and field use as a "flora" to present the general treatment 
entirely in English, these new species are here published separately. 
The customary division of these tree-ferns into three genera, Cyathea, 
IlemUelia or Amphicosnila, and AhopMla has for many years had no 
defenders even among those who have maintained them in deference to 
custom and supposed convenience. As a matter of fact, 1 do not find 
this division even convenient. There are so many species with evanes- 
cent, partial, or so-called spurious indu>ia that the generic assignment 
of a specimen often depends upon its age or preservation; and even 
when M-orking witli perfect and fresh material too much depends upon 
individual judgment. 
The vital objection, however, to maintaining these genera is not in- 
convenience, but tlie fact that as every pteridologist knows they are not 
natural. Tliis is so well understood that the enumeration of instances 
of ch^se affinity between indusiate and exindusiate species would be super- 
fluous. The indusium is as valueless as a generic character here as it 
is in Dryoiftrris; in both groups there are single species the status of 
which in this respect is ambiguous. 
The only reason for the maintenance up to this time of these genera 
has been tlie feeling that it was inexpedient to give them up until a 
better generic classification of these ferns could be offered in place of 
the one in use. It certainly will be possible and for the most part is 
possible now, to arrange these ferns in groups more natural than the 
three genera recently upheld, but I have come decidedly to the opinion 
that because of the naturalness and evident homogeneity of the whole 
group, and because of the difficulty of defining the more natural 
minor groups, it is not and will not be desirable to make any generic 
division whatever of these tree-ferns. I have therefore treated them 
all as species of one genus, Cyathea, and have merely indicated, for 
the convenience of those to whom this con^ruction may at first seem 
strange, those species which would belong to the artificial genus AhopliUa. 
