MR. C. B. CLARKE ON THE FERNS OF NORTHERN INDIA. 429 
to Kumaon, Strachey & Winterbotiom.—Distrib. Mts. of Malabaria and Ceylon, China, 
Japan, Malaya, to Tropical Australia, Polynesia, and America. 
Scandent over other jungle, sometimes for several hundred feet, often rooting. Fronds 
in divaricate pairs. Texture of the pinnules hard, stout, margin recurved; veinlets 
3- (or more) branched from near the base. Pinnules beneath usually glaucous, with 
some ferruginous hair near the base of the pinna; sometimes this hair extends to the 
rhachis of the pinnules beneath. 
2. CxATHEA, Smith. 
Involucre globose, uniform in texture, scarcely thinner at the apex, dehiscing by irre- 
gular lines when the capsules are ripe. At no stage of ripening, therefore, are the 
involucres to be found as hemispheres in which complete globes of unripe capsules are 
seated. (This definition is merely designed to separate the single North-Indian species 
from the closely allied Hemitelias.) 
l. C. serNULOSA, Wall. Cat. 178. Rhachis of pinnules beneath sparingly bullate-scaly, 
not pubescent; veinlets (in the segments of a pinnule from the middle of a barren 
pinna) 2-branched and frequently 3-branched; sori very large, the two rows occu- 
pying very nearly the whole breadth of the segment; involucre white, stout.—Hk. 
Sp. Fil. i. t. 12c. (Pl. XLIX: fig. 1.) 
Nepaul, Wallich; Jaintea Hills, alt. 4800-4500 feet, C. B. Clarke. 
Attains 30 feet. Prickly, to the rhachis of the pinnules.  Pinnules rusty, hirsute- 
pubescent on the midrib above, otherwise nearly glabrous. Fertile and barren fronds 
somewhat dimorphous ; fertile segments much narrowed, especially in their fruit-bearing 
portion; the veinlets rarely 3-branched. The venation must be observed in the segments 
of the pinnules taken from the middle of a well-developed pinna from a barren frond. 
In many species of tree ferns with uniformly 2-branched veinlets, if an imperfectly-deve- 
loped pinnule be taken from a pinna near the top of the frond, the veinlets may be 
found 3-branched or subpinnate. Sir W. J. Hooker took his figures from Wall. Cat. 
178, which are very faithful; but fig. 4 (taken probably from a segment with very unripe 
fruit) shows the sori too small, and, indeed, does not agree with fig. 3 (same place), which 
shows the sori nearly as broad as the segment. The accompanying description (Sp. Fil. 
i. 25) is unfortunately drawn up partly from Wight's no. 149, which is Alsophila late- 
brosa; and the diagnosis in Hk. & Baker, Syn. Fil. 23, is similarly compounded of two 
plants. Oyathea spinulosa, Bedd. Ferns South Ind. t. 57, represents a pinna of Hemi- 
telia Beddomei, C. B. Clarke, with analyses of segments copied from Hook. Sp. Fil. i. 
t. 12 c, which do not represent the Deccan species at all. Hemitelia Beddomei has the 
segments (of a pinnule from the middle of a well-developed pinna) elongate crenulate, 
veinlets frequently 3-branched, sori very small, involucre at first completely enclosing 
the sorus, but very thin and soon reduced to a hemispheric cup, and is not conspecific 
either with any Himalayan fern or any other than I can find in the Kew Herbarium. 
