455 



Nephr odium fcenisecii of Loive identical with Lastrcea recurva. 

 By Edward Newman. 



Mr. Watson has obligingly forwarded me a suite of specimens of 

 Lowe's Nephrodium fcenisecii, collected in Madeira, and has accom- 

 panied the specimens with a series of questions relating thereto, and 

 drawn up with the view of fixing the prior specific name of fcenisecii 

 on both the Madeiran and British plants. 



I am now fully convinced that Mr. Lowe intended to describe the 

 species subsequently characterized by Mr. Bree under the name re- 

 curva, and also that Mr. Lowe's fcenisecii, @. productum, is not a se- 

 cond species, but a very trivial variety in form only : under these 

 circumstances it seems to me that we have no choice but to adopt the 

 prior name. 



Edward Newman. 



9, Devonshire Street, Bishopsgate, 

 February, 1849. 



Notice of a Paper on three supposed Species of Polystichum, by 



Professor Kunze. 



Whatever is done by a botanist bearing so high a reputation for 

 knowledge of European ferns as Professor Kunze must deserve the 

 serious consideration of all lovers of truth. But more than this we 

 are not prepared to admit : we are not prepared to say that any amount 

 of reputation should insure the adoption of proposed species. 



In the paper to which we allude* Professor Kunze describes at 

 great length those forms of Polystichum which are usually known in 

 this country as the " aculeatum set :" he makes three species under 

 the names of lobatum, aculeatum and Braunii. Lobatum, he informs 

 us, = the Aspidium lobatum of Smith, 'Fl. Brit.' iii. 1123, and of 

 ' English Botany,' 1563 : aculeatum = the Aspidium aculeatum of 

 Smith, 'Fl. Brit.' iii. 1120: and Braunii = the Aspidium angulare of 

 Kitaibel (first described by Willdenow in the ' Species Plantarum,' v. 

 257) only in part. There is no point more preeminently a qucestio 

 vexata among British botanists than the value of those differences 

 which distinguish certain individual plants of the " aculeatum set " 



* Flora, June, 1848. 



