FERNS. 137 
of the most frequent and also one of the most delicate of our 
Ferns, remarkable for its creeping habit and the filiform leafless 
prolongations of its fronds, as will be seen on reference to Fig. 
LVII. ; young plantlets not rarely spring from the summit of 
the extended axis. Asplenium umbrosum, one of the rarer of our 
forest-ferns, with spacious much divided fronds, can at once be 
recognised by the almost cylindric or tumid involucres, which 
usually burst irregularly. One European species bore already in 
the most ancient medical works the generic name, because it was 
in use as a remedy in spleen-diseases. 
Another of our prominent genera of Ferns is Aspidium, so 
designated on account of the shield-like involucres covering the 
fruitmasses. The rarest among them is Aspzdium hispidum, as 
yet only known from the Cape Otway ranges and New Zealand. 
The bristly hair, which densely beset the stalks and axis, render this 
species easily recognised. On our Ferntrees we find not unfrequently 
Aspidium Capense (or A. coriaceum) with thick comparatively 
broad smooth fronds, much divided pinne, rather large involucres 
and often black fruitmasses. The most common of ours is Asp7- 
dium aculeatum, but it never extends to dry localities and has a 
predilection for cool spots, thus growing most vigorously here in 
the alpine zone. The fronds are not so broad in proportion to 
length as those of the preceding species ; the plant is beset with 
often dark scales and the teeth of the fronds are very acutely 
pointed. The two other Aspidiums, known from Victoria, belong 
to a section or subgenus, called Nephrodium, because the involucre 
is kidney-shaped or verges to that form. Of these two Aspidium 
molle is rare with us, having only been found in crevices of cliffs on 
Murray-River; its fronds are simply pinnate membranous and 
soft-downy. <Aspidium acuminatum is repeatedly pinnate, and the 
ultimate segments of the fronds are acutely serrated. This 
Fern can be considered as a variety of Aspidium decompositum, 
but the root is less creeping. In A. acuminatum and A. acule- 
atum the involucre may become obliterated or even undeveloped, 
when nothing remains to exclude such stages of these Ferns from 
the genus Polypodium. The last of the tribe Polypodiacez are 
two species of Grammitis, one of these not uncommon even out 
