ee ee a a Y ee ee ee eee ee ae eee 
321 
Observations on GLEICHENIACE® and CyATHEX of Java; by Mr. J. B®. 
HASSKARL: communicated in a Letter from Java, dated July, 1855. 
Mr. Hasskarl,* the able author of the ‘Catalogus Plantarum in 
Horto Botanico Bogoriensi cultarum,’ of the ‘Plante Javanicze Ra- 
riores,’ and several other botanical works, is now stationed at Preange, | 
in Java, at the very base of the famous mountain Gedeh, where he is 
prosecuting his botanical researches with great zeal, and is paying par- 
ticular attention to, and fully describing, the various Ferns of that 
fertile island. He has been good enough to communicate to me the 
following notes on those genera and species which have first engaged 
his attention: and he has there the inestimable advantage of studying 
the most difficult genera with the living plants before him ; so that his 
remarks on the Cyathee owe much of their value to this circumstance. 
He has kindly promised, previous to publishing on a more extended 
Scale, to communicate some notes on the Dicksoniee, Hymenophyllee, 
T Davalliee, which will be most welcome to all students of Ferns.— 
ET 
Preange (Island of Java), July 25, 1855. 
I shall beg to relate to you some of my remarks on the Ferns: the 
full descriptions of the plants I shall send to you when they are printed, 
Which I hope soon will be the case by the Batavian part of the Natural 
Society for the Duteh East Indies. 
Firstly, I will express my opinion that Gleichenia and Mertensia 
Ought to form different genera; the similarity of habit cannot, I be- 
lieve, be sufficient reason to unite them, the insertion of the sori being 
very different, as you have indicated at page 2, Subgen. I. and Subgen. 
LI. of the Spec. Fil.; but the name of Mertensia, Willd., cannot be re- 
tained, in consequence of Mertensia, Roth (DC. Prodr. x. 84), being of 
older date than that of Willdenow. 
Gleichenia vulcanica, Bl., seems to me not truly to be different from 
G. alpina, Roth; the marks of distinction given by Mr. Blume by no 
means correspond with his plant, for the rachis is as much clothed with 
imbricated scales as with (tomentum) down. Kunze, in his Suppl. to 
Schkuhr's Ferns, i. 162, observes that his G. Boryi bears some likeness 
in the habit with the G. vulcanica, Bl., or, at least, what he had received ae 
* Thi i lose not only his books, but his ——— 
entire family, wife and four children. by shipwreck, on the coast of Holland, which 
they were just leaving to join Mr. Hasskarl in Java. = 
VOL. VII. 
