NECKER'S GENERA OF FERNS. 107 
having adopted one of the Linnzan species names (A. 
Onopteris), as the genus-name ? 
It is the most natural and rational of inferences, that when 
a species-name is raised to the rank of a genus-name, the 
genus including that species, said species is the type of the 
genus. But curiously enough, Necker's Onopteris is doubly 
anchored to A. Onopteris as its type; for that name isa 
synonym of Asplenium Adiantum nigrum, Linn., and under 
this its prior appellation, it heads that Linnsean group of 
compound-fronded speeies which Necker cites as the equiva- 
lent of his proposed new genus. If, as a critic of fern- 
genera, I had even wished to avoid knowing what Onopteris 
is, or what its type-species is, I do not see how it could have 
been done but by wilfully ignoring all the indications whieh 
Necker gives. 
And as fór the Asplenium of Necker, it is made to in- 
clude Scolopendrium and its near allies, and has the true 
Scolopendrium for its type. That is clearly enough indi- 
cated by the author's writing the French name of the Harts 
Tongue, Scolopendre, as the vernacular (French) synonym 
of his Asplenium. But what is more, the description is 
that of Scolopendrium and not of any Asplenium of later 
authors. And in this our author was simply standing by 
the doctrine of many early and learned botanists, as well as 
some of the ablest contemporaries of Linnzus, that the 
Asplenium of the ancients was the Harts Tongue. Even 
Liunzeus, it may be observed, places it in the first of his four 
groups or subgenera Asplenium. So that the Asplenium 
of Necker can be disposed of intelligently and accurately in 
no other way but as a synonym of Scolopendrium, 4. e., 
Phyllitis. 
