446 BENEDICT: ANTROPHYUM 
ciently complete for an exhaustive study of all the species, and in 
this paper only the American species are treated extensively. 
Complete descriptions of all the species can not be given without 
comparative study of the types in the European herbaria. Further 
field work is also necessary. 
The herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden has fur- 
nished most of the material studied, but loans from the Eaton 
Herbarium and from the U. S. National Herbarium have been of 
great assistance, and hearty thanks are hereby tendered Professor 
Evansand Mr. Maxon for their aid. To Dr. Christ also, thanks 
are due for a loan of type material of one of his species. 
ANTROPHYUM Kaulf. Enum. Fil. 197. 1824 
Plants epiphytic or on rock (rarely in soil) ; rhizomes rather 
stout, short-creeping or suberect, usually clothed with a dense 
mass of fuzzy roots, together with the bases of old fronds ; apical 
buds and stipe-bases covered with delicate deciduous clathrate 
scales whose cell-walls may be smooth or papillose ; fronds cespi- 
tose, glabrous, membranous, coriaceous, or fleshy, sessile or with 
alate stipes ; costas complete or vestigial, the secondary venation 
reticulate, without included veinlets, of long costal areolae and 
shorter, frequently divergent lateral ones, which may be closed 
along the margin, or open in free veinlets: sporangia in either 
simple or branching lines mostly along the longitudinal veins, free 
or more or less interconnected, or completely reticulated and on 
all the veins (in mature fronds), superficial or immersed in 
grooves ; indusia wanting ; paraphyses of various shapes may be 
mixed with the sporangia. i 
Various methods have been used to divide the genus into 
groups. Those based on gross foliar or soral differences alone 
have not been successful, as they have included in the same sec- 
tions species which differed in fundamental characters such as 
spore-form. At the suggestion and aided by the advice of Dr. 
Underwood, to whom sincere thanks are due, the writer has en-. 
deavored to find out whether microscopic characters would furnish 
adequate means of separation, The results have been extremely 
Satisfactory. Part of the scheme given below is based on that used 
by Fée in his monograph of the genus,* but it is very much modi- 
fied and extended, and the characters are chosen so as to show 
*Mém. Foug. 4 : 39-52. 1852, 
