1840.] Linnean Society. 57 



February 18, 

 The Lord Bishop of Nor-nich, President, in the Chair. 



The Rev. George Isherwood, of Old Windsor, was elected a Fel- 

 low of tlie Society. 



Mr. George T. Fox, F.L.S., exhibited a specimen of the Phryno- 

 soina cornutum (Agama cornuta of Harlan) from Texas. 



Mr. Cameron, A.L.S., presented a specimen of a new fern (Cibo- 

 tium Baromez, J. Sm.) which has lately borne fructification, for the 

 first time in this country, in the garden of the Birmingham Horti- 

 cultural Society. A description of the plant by Mr. Westcott ac- 

 companied the specimen. The fern has been cultivated for some 

 years in the gardens as the Agnus Scythicus or Vegetable Lamb 

 {Polypodium Baromez, Linn.), but whether identical with the plant 

 of Linnaeus is a question still undetermined, as there happens to be 

 no specimen in his herbarium, and the description alone is too meagre 

 to settle the point. Mr. Westcott is however in possession of a spe- 

 cimen of a fern collected in Mexico by Mr. Ross, which closely re- 

 sembles the plant of the gardens, and should they prove to be iden- 

 tical, aU doubt will be removed as to the claims of the present plant 

 to be regarded as the Baromez of Linnaeus, which is a native of 

 China. 



The following is Mr. Westcott's description of the species : — 



Rhizoma densely clothed with yellow woolly articulated hairs. 

 Stipes about 7 feet high, roundish, of a dark reddish brown colour, 

 more or less covered with tufts of woolly hairs near the base, naked 

 for about half its height : upper part flexuous from the point where 

 the pinnae commence. Frond bipinnate ; pinna alternate, ovate-lan- 

 ceolate, acuminate, smooth, under surface glaucous, upper surface 

 dark green ; those pinnae bearing the sori curved, the barren pinnee 

 straight ; pinnules pinnatifid, alternate, linear-lanceolate, acuminate ; 

 upper ones decurrent ; lower ones shortly petiolate ; lobes oblong, 

 sharply serrated, more or less truncated, acute ; margins somewhat 

 revolute, lobes in the upper row of each pinnula somewhat larger 

 than those of the lower row, and those nearest to the rachis in the 

 upper row the largest of all. Venation in the barren pinnae branched, 

 in the fertile pinnae simple ; veins alternate. Indusia pouch-like, 

 coriaceous sessile, situate on the apex of a vein at the margin, and 

 near the base of the lobe of the pinnula : dehiscence by a transverse 



No. VII. — Proceedings of the Linneax Society. 



