130 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



vai-ieties and shapes of its leav^es, will hai'dly blame Goldie for his mis- 

 take, if mistake it was. Last summer I found in the rich woodlands of 

 the Upper Restigouche a plant strikingly like the plant described by 

 Goldie, and which ought, perhaps, to be regarded as a variety of H. 

 orbi'culata. It was gi'owing in tropical luxuriance, with leaves roundish- 

 oval, from seven to eight inches in length, and a spike of white flowera 

 fully six inches long. 



The Osmunda alata of Goldie, found on the island of Montreal and 

 along the Ottawa river, has few specific differences to distinguish it from 

 0. cmnamomea, but these ai*e well marked, and Macoun and Burgess 

 have placed it in their monograph on the Ferns of Canada as a variety 

 of 0. cinnamomea. 



Aspidium Goldianum is thus described : " From one and a half to 

 two feet in height. Allied to Aspidium cristatum more than to any other 

 species in the genus ; but abundantly distinguishable by the greater 

 breadth of the frond, which gives quite a different outline, and b}^ the 

 form of the pinna», which are never broader at the base, but are, on the 

 contrary, narrower than several of the segments just above them. These 

 segments, too, are longer and narrower, slightly falcate, and those of the 

 lowermost pinna» are never lobed, but simply serrated at the margin. The 

 serratures are likewise terminated by more decided, though short spin- 

 ules. The fructifications are central, near the mid-rib. and this circum- 

 stance prevents the species from bearing, as it would otherwise do, no 

 inconsiderable affinity to A. marginale. 



" Specimens of this plant, cultivated in the Botanical Garden at 

 Glasgow, from roots which I brought from Canada, retain all the char- 

 acters which I have above described." 



