MR. C. B. CLARKE ON THE FERNS OF NORTHERN INDIA. 431 
of pinnze often free from prickles; 3-branched veinlets very rare. In the common Khasi 
plant the involucre appears as a half-cup with lacerate margin while the spores are 
dispersing; in the Sikkim form the involucre, though a complete thin globe in the 
earliest stage, is reduced ultimately to a patelliform scale, sometimes hidden by the ripe 
sorus, but seen as a disk surrounding the carpophore when the spores have been dis- 
persed. The whole of the Kew Cyathea spinulosa (except Wallich’s type specimen) is 
this plant; it is very easily distinguished therefrom by the 2-branched veinlets and 
the pubescent rhachis of the pinnules. There is no original specimen of Wall. Cat. 7073— 
the examples under that number in the Wallichian Herbarium having been “ taken 
from the specimen on the staircase," which it was supposed might have been 4. Bru- 
noniana, Wall.: these are Alsophila glauca, J. Smith. The trunk referred to by 
Sir W. J. Hooker remains in the Kew Museum; but the fronds on it described by him 
are gone; this trunk, however, is certainly not that of Alsophila glauca, as supposed in 
Hk. & Baker, Syn. Fil. 42. Griffith says (Private Journals, p. 170), “the Alsophila 
Brunoniana is apparently confined to the limestone hill at Cherra, while the tree fern 
Polypodium is found on sandstone." The limestone hill at Cherra, alt. 4200 feet, still 
supplies plentifully Hemitelia Brunoniana. By the tree fern Polypodium, Griffith 
doubtless meant the exinvolucrate Alsophila glauca, which extends from the Cherra 
Khud to Sylhet Station. Griffith also says (Private Journals, p. 7) that Wallich and 
himself found 4. Brunoniana during a trip from Cherra to Mamloo. The only tree ferns 
near this path are the Hemitelia Brunoniana across the brook on the limestone hill. 
Var.? Scottii. Segments of the fertile pinnules unusually large, deeply crenated, with 
many 3-branched veinlets. 
Sikkim.—A single fertile pinna, collected by J. Scott, and marked by him Alsophila 
latebrosa, var. B, of which it has exactly the fruit. The 3-branched veins are a con- 
comitant of the deeply crenate segments, which thus show an approach to a pinnatifid 
state. This is probably (as Scott evidently considered it) an unusually developed con- 
dition of the Sikkim form of Hemitelia Brunoniana; but I should not be surprised 
if it should prove a new species. 
4. ALSOPHILA, R. Br. 
Involucre, if any, disappearing before the capsules are mature. In several species 
there are ovate or ovate-lanceolate bullate scales along the rhachis of the pinnules and 
segments. When the sorus is near the midrib of the segment, the bullate scale may be 
attached by its broad base almost under the sorus, but only laterally to the sorus on the 
inner side, and not continuous with the carpophore; so that when the capsules have 
dispersed it does not appear as a patelliform seale surrounding the base of the carpophore. 
The bullate scale is of lax areolar tissue, entirely different from the thin scale en} is 
the remnant of the involucre in Hemitelia, as J. Scott has remarked. ^ 
l. A. LATEBROSA, Hook. Sp. Fil. i. 37. Rhachis of pinnules beneath glabrous; veinlets 
(in the segments of a pinnule from the middle of a barren pinna) 2-branched; sori 
: . not nearly occupying the whole breadth of the me & Baker, Syn. Fil 45) — 
in (SECOND D SERTES.—BOTANY, Y VOL. LO -| 
