CHARACTERS OF TRIBES AND GENERA. 209 
specimens of the same species are found, some with the 
indusia and some without, for instance, being present at 
the distribution of Cuming’s Philippine Island collection 
of specimens in 1841, I noted that number 315 was 
indusiate, which in my enumeration of that collection 
I named Nephrodiwm simplicifolium. It was not till nearly 
twenty years afterwards when Cuming’s specimens of this 
species came under Sir William Hooker’s observation for 
entry in the “Species Filicum,” that finding it had no 
indusium he placed it under Polypodiwm in the section 
Goniopteris. 
Another example of the untrustworthiness of the indu- 
sium as a generic character is verified in Phegopieris 
Seemanni, described by me in the “ Botany of the Voyage 
of the Herald,” from specimens collected by Seemann in 
Darien; Mettenius also retains it in Phegopteris, but makes 
it a synonym of Aspidiwm brachyodon of Kunze, while in 
the “Species Filicum" it is placed in Nephrodium, the 
*involucre" being described as “small fugaceous,” thus 
showing that at least some of the specimens in the Kew 
herbarium were indusiate ; but as several American locali- 
ties, as also the Malayan Peninsular and islands, are given 
as stations for this Fern, it is therefore quite possible that 
the American and Malayan specimens represent two dis- 
tinct species, one with indusiate sori, and the other with 
naked. ‘This and several other allied species is peculiar 
in having stout arboroid stems a foot or more in height, 
with the pinns articulate with the rachis, as also in the 
lobes of the pinnse being joined by a line like a seam, 
which extends from the mid-rib of the pinne to the sinus 
between each two lobes, by which in time the lobes become ` 
separated as if artificially cut. Setting aside the presence or ` ` 
absence of the indusium, and in the venules being free ~ 
mo*- 2 
