420 Transactions. — Botany. 



long, 3-4 lines wide, pinnate, free, subfalcate, pinnatifid to 

 costa, deeply forked, lobes long, linear, equal, subacute ; tips 

 callous ; margins entire, thickened, lighter green ; the upper 

 basal pinnule three-lobed. Veins simple, thickish, prominent, 

 extending to margin ; white strangulated hairs patent on 

 subrachises among red woolly ones. Sporangia throughout 

 numerous, close, compact, covering pinnule ; capsules pitted, 

 red-brown, subsessile. 



Hab. Forests near Dannevirke ; 18&8-96 : W. C. 



Ohs. This fine fern I had often noticed and admired in my 

 annual visits to the woods, but, without closely examining it, 

 had considered it to be a larger plant of the more common 

 species T. hymenopliylloides , which also grew plentifully there. 

 However, while in those woods in September of this year 

 (having more spare time), I procured a frond for a closer ex- 

 amination, and I find several characters differing from those 

 of T. ]iymeno2JhyUoides . Not only in its much larger size, 

 form, habit, darker colour and texture — all apparent at first 

 sight — does it diffe]*, but in several minute characters given 

 above in its description ; as its numerous sporangia thickly 

 covering the pinnules, and their being truly pinnate and free, 

 with thickened and coloured margins and veins ; and its pinnae 

 decreasing in size and very distant on rachis towards base. 

 In the early drawings of the typical specimens of T. hyvieno- 

 pJiyUoides these characters do not appear ; the forked lobes of 

 the pinnatifid pinnules are shown to be shorter and greatly 

 unequal, with few and scattered sori confined to their bases, 

 while " sporangia sparsa " is given as a character pertaining 

 to it (Hook, et Grev., " Genera Filicum," tab. xlvi., B.) ; and 

 in Sir W. J. Hooker's faithful drawing (" Icones Plantarum," 

 vol. i., tab. viii.) a portion of the highly-membranous frond is 

 also separately given to " show the reticulated structure of the 

 frond," which I have failed to detect in this fern. Baker also 

 (in " Syn. Filicum," the latest authority) says, " Tripinnatifid, 

 with pinnules cut down nearly to the rachis," adding (in a 

 note), " There is a form which quite agrees with this in the size 

 and cutting of the pinnse, but which has the lower ones reduced 

 very gradually, thus receding from the type in the direction of 

 the next species" (T. superha, Col., I.e., p. 428), which may 

 possibly be this one here now described, though I doubt it. 

 In a fine specimen of T. hymenojjliylloides (vera) I have now 

 before me, I find the pinnules on its middle pinnae to be largely 

 pinnatifid on their costa, with the lobes on their sides nearer 

 the rachis simple and single instead of forked. 



Genus : Unknoivn. 

 Plant large, erect, slightly drooping; stipe lOin.-llin. 

 long, 2-21 lines thick, rather slender, dry, sulcate and striate 



