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Definitions of Two New Australian Plants. 



By Baeox Feed, tox Mueller, K.CM.G., M.D., F.E.S., &c.,, 

 and Peofessoe Ea.lph Tate, P.G-.S., P.L.S., &c. 



[Read October 2, 1887.] 



Cheilanthes Clelandi. 



Dwarf, stipes sliiniug, dark -brown, almost glabrous; fronds- 

 small, semilanceolar-deltoid in outline, bipinnate, greyish-green ; 

 rliacliis beset witli very short, spreading, somewhat glandular 

 hairs ; segments of frond broadly linear, sessile, almost blunt, 

 flat, minutely crenate-serrulate, glabrous, the terminal segment 

 somewhat elongate ; indusium membranous, extending broadly 

 and uninterruptedly along the whole lower margin of the fer- 

 tile segments ; sori minute, dispersed, one at the upper end of 

 each of the prominent pinnately divergent veins, each separ- 

 ately lodged in a sinus of the serrature. 



On Caroona Hill in the Gawler Eanges, 45 miles due west 

 from the head of Spencer Gulf ; D)\ Cleland. 



The only specimen available for examination is devoid of its 

 rhizome ; the stipes is about as long as the frond ; the latter 

 reaches a breadth of two inches and a length of three and a 

 half, it is remarkably pale, particularly so in contrast to the 

 dark-brown rhachis ; the segments are nearly one-eighth inch 

 broad, the indusium covering in close appression the greater 

 portion of the soriferous segments ; sporangia very few in each 

 sorus, almost unprovided with stalklets. 



This singular fern combines the indusium of a Uteris with 

 the disposition of the sori of a Cheilanthes, no threadlike 

 receptacle uniting the sporangia into continuity, the latter 

 being perfectly concealed. A close approach is offered by this 

 plant also to Cryptogramme with which genus Prantl (in 

 Engler's Botanische Jahrbiicher, III., 413), unites Onychium 

 and Llavea. "Whether our new fern, which is preferentially 

 placed under Cheilanthes but just as well referable to Crypto- 

 gramme, has the generally dimorphous fronds of the last men- 

 tioned genus, remains to be ascertained. 



In habit this fern closely resembles Pellcsa i^ilosa, P. Soje^'i, 

 P. densa, and Cheilanthes pulchella. The generic position, 

 assigned to it, is rendered all the more justified, as Cheilanthes 

 suhvillosa has also a continuous equally wide and rather ample 

 indusium. Moreover the general similarity of C. Clelandi to 



