OF THE SyYNopsiIs FILIcUM 619 
widespread species, which from the above statement, apparently 
disregards all known laws of geographic distribution, we find as 
we might expect that the species as treated at Kew is a conglom- 
erate of several not very closely related species that have been 
miscellaneously grouped together, and the whole covered by what 
Dr. Giesenhagen has recently and not inappropriately called a 
“ Kautschukdiagnose.”” We find that the original species bearing 
this name came from Mauritius whence it was originally described 
by Swartz (not Willdenow as the misleading practice of citing 
only the galvanizer instead of the original author would lead us to 
Suspect) and was appropriately named attenuata from the long 
attenuate tip of the leaf which does not appear in the more com- 
mon species of the West Indies, which all the botanists who have 
Studied it down to the acute and lamented Jenman, following the 
misleading of Kew have confused with this characteristic Mauritian 
Species which appears to be endemic in that island.* In a similar 
way another West Indian member of the same genus has been 
confused with Lomaria procera originally described from New 
Zealand, but which this comprehensive but inaccurate guide re- 
Ports from 
“Mexico and West Indies southward to Chili; Malayan and Polynesian Islands, 
N. Zealand, S, Australia, Van Dieman’s Land and S. Africa,”’ 
These are by no means isolated cases for the whole work bristles 
With such distributional absurdities, some even more pronounced. 
In Synopsis Filicum more than in Species Filicum, there are 
Many species reduced to synonymy frequently when the spe- 
_cimens had never been seen by the author. Kunze’s species have 
been slaughtered wholesale and many of them will have to be re- 
Vived, and the same is true of many of the species of Fée. In the 
Kew copy of the works of the latter author many of the species 
are penciled as being equivalent of this and that species already 
_ described, leaving scarcely any of them to stand as “ good species.” 
Ina number of instances Mr. Baker has redescribed some of Fée’s 
een aa 
*With such a wide range of possibilities involved in the elastic description of 
L. attenuata, it is not surprising that even Mr. Davenport was misled by it into calling 
ingle’s no. 4999 L. attenuata, for surely it is little more diverse in general habit than 
Some other things that have been included in this species, although Pringle’s plant is 
Properly & member of a distinct genus, Plagiogyria biserrata. The same error was 
“pied by C, 1. Smith in his Plantae Mexicanae, 2063, which is also P. diserrata. 
