THE ADDER'S TONGUE FERNS. 87 



of O. V7ilgat2t!Ji, nor are they flattened and indented on the inner face 

 and lack the three ridges, and trefoil markings of those of O. Engel- 

 vianni. The species seems to be sufficiently distinct, whether we adopt 

 the Linnaean or the evolutionary view of a species, although it does 

 resemble some of the dwarfed forms of O. vulgatiiin., and seems to be 

 a connecting link between the members of that group and those of 

 OpJiioglossum Lusitaniciim, which are smaller and have a gregarious 

 habit. 



OpJiioglossum Californicum Prantl represents this last group in 

 America, and has been known in our text-books and journals as 

 O. nudicanle. Dr. C. C. Parry collected it as early as 1850 and sent it to 

 Dr. Torrey, who mounted it and left it in his herbarium unnamed. 

 Professor D. C. Eaton called it O. nudicanle when it was re-discovered 

 at the type station near San Diego, California, by Cleveland and 

 Parry in 1882, and singularly enough it was discovered at two other 

 stations in the same year, by C. G. Pringle and M. E Jones, extend- 

 ing its range into Lower California and Mexico. That there are other 

 new and undescribed species from Mexico, closely related in this 

 group, I do not doubt, as Pringle has already discovered in Chihuahua, 

 a species, which I believe to be distinct. 



As for the name Ophioglossuvt nudicanle L., it belongs to a South 

 African species collected by Thunberg at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 and in the sense in which it has been used in our text-books should 

 be cited as O. nudicanle Sturm in part. Five authors have applied 

 the name to seven different species, of which our smallest species of 

 the genus was one of the victims. Prantl, even as late as 1884, sup- 

 posed it had no name of its own, but Nuttall, in 1818, described 

 OpJiioglossum pusillum from South Carolina, and his specimens are 

 preserved in the herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, and are unquestionably what we have been calling 

 O. nudicanle. There are two other specimens in Nuttall's herbarium 

 also labelled O. pusillum^ by some one else, presumably Schweinitz, 

 according to a letter in Professor Eaton's herbarium from J. H. Red- 

 field. But there is some ground for supposing that Nuttall had not 

 clearly separated O. bulbosnm Michx.,from his own O. pusillum., even 

 though he cited them both on the same page directly following each 

 other, because he says of O. pusillinn that the frond is "cordate." 

 However, even if O. pusillum is a mixed species, it is clear that he 

 meant the name to belong to the specimens in his herbarium to which 

 he signed his name "Nutt. " and the other specimens have not his 

 signature. This species is confined to the Southern states, ranging 

 from South Carolina to Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, and O. bulbosnm, 

 into Mexico, Bolivia and the Argentine Republic. Both are small 



