PBOCEEDINGS OP 80CIETIE8. 27 



This is the ordinary or more usual arrangement of the bandies, and may, I think, 

 be looked on as the typical or normal venstion of the plant. (Plate ti. fig. 2.) 



Let us now contrast the arrangement of parts in variety Cristatam. The 

 fruitful branch remains, of course, unaltered, but in the barren branch great 

 changes occur, instead of one^ wo find that two bundles are given uif from the main 

 bundles at base of each of the lower pinnules, and each of these bundles gives off 

 in turn a siiiyle bundle to each of its secondary pinnules, and these tertiary bundles 

 compurt themselves exactly as the secondary bundles in the ordinary form. In fJACt, 

 the whole arrangement resembles very closely what has been stated to occur in the 

 fruitful branch, the arrangements being, in fact, identical, as proved by the spe- 

 cimen quoted before, in which these secondary branches of the main branch were 

 some of them fruitful, proving that these barren lower pinnae of the deltoid form 

 are identical with the fruitful branches of the common form, and that, therefore, 

 the fruitful branch, as already stated, is merely an extreme modification of the 

 barren branch, each pinnule of the latter representing a bunch or cluster of the 

 former, and each linear cluster of the former representing a single division of the 

 pinnule of the latter ; as also can be shown by examining the venation in the 

 pinnules of the deeply-incised form of the moonwort, which often bear sori on 

 their edges, each sorus presenting at its base an arrangement of veins similar to 

 what I have attempted to describe on the fruitful branch. (Plate vi. fig. 1.) 



This variety now under consideration occurs both in the ordinary form of Botry- 

 chium Lunaria and in that with deeply-incised pinnules, and this brings us to the 

 consideration of whether this form may not be Doody'sold plant, recorded by Ray. 

 I am inclined to think it is ; though a most competent judge on the matter, Edward 

 Newman, has referred this plant of Doody's to the species Rutaceum, Swartz, as 

 also Sir J. E. Smith, in the English Flora (vol. iv., page 328). Ray describes his 

 variety as follows (vide Phytologist, vol. v., page 129 ; Newman's British Ferns, third 

 edition, page 320) : — "Lunariam minorem ramosam et Lunariam mmor foliis dLsectis, 

 Westmoreland, D, Lawson ; hujus plantae varietates ; non distinctas species opinatur. 

 (D. Doody, Syn. II., App. 340.) Lunariam minorem foliis dissectis revera dis- 

 tinctam speciem vult, cum segmenta seu lunulas nou solum eminenter sint secta^ sed 

 planta etiam elatior sit et botrus racemosior. Est Lunaria botrytis minor pinnulis 

 laciniatis^ in Borealibus nostris Pluk. Aim. 288." Now, this whole description, 

 especially /o/iw dissectis^ and " non solum eminenter sectae" (qy. cut at the apex) 

 sed planta etiam elatior (the broad-base of frond) et botrus racemosior (which also is 

 the case in several of my specimens), in my judgment more closely agrees with Bot. 

 Lun. var. cristatum Kin. than with Botrychium Rutaceum. Again, the plant 

 seems to have occurred amongst the ordinary form, but suflSciently rarely to call for 

 comments, all rather pointing to a variety than to an undoubted species, which, if it 

 had occurred so frequently as Ray's plant appears to have done, ought to have fallen 

 since then under notice of some of our botanists, and Smith, from his notice, does 

 not appear to me to have met the plant, as, had he met only the perfect form of 

 this variety, it is too remarkable to have been passed over without description ; and 

 had he met the intermediate forms, he certainly would have mentioned so strong a 

 proof as they would have aflforded of the specific identity of the two forms. I know 

 that these latter objections may also be urged against var. criatatum ; but still that 

 Ray actually saw or knew of Doody's plant is unmistakeable, and it seems more 

 likely to have been merely a variety of plant known to exist in England in quantity, 

 *than a plant of whose occurrence we have no proof, if we except Mr. Crnick- 

 shank's specimen of monstrous growth from Dundee (Brit, ferns, page 323), and these 

 are too much deformed to enable us to form an opinion with any degree of certainty. 

 These arguments are not for one moment to be supposed to be directed against, 

 the existence of Botrychium rutaceum as a species, but merely to prove that Doody *s 

 plants and these now exhibited were probably the same. If^so, it is interesting to 

 nnd a form apparently lost for so long re- appearing at a distance from the original 

 localities. 



The other forms which are now exhibited illustrate all the varieties of form which 

 appear in the fern with which I am acquainted. They are, in addition to the ordi- 



