ALPINE POLYPODY. 89 



the present, and we must leave it to our readers to decide, after 

 they have found the fern, to which group they will regard it as 

 belonging. For our part, we consider it is a case that shows 

 a weakness in our classification, which brings together species 

 so utterly unlike on the strength of a common character that is 

 purely negative. Newman's proposal, fifty years ago, to con- 

 stitute a new genus (Pseudathyriuiri) for it, seems to us to have 

 been a more reasonable course than to place it in the genus 

 Polypodium. 



The Alpine Polypody has a short stout tufted rootstock 

 sparingly covered with brown scales, from which the soft 

 oblong lance-shaped fronds rise in a circle. They vary from 

 one foot to three feet in length, and are broadest at the middle, 

 tapering above and below. The stout stipes is very short (three 

 to six inches), clothed near the base with light-brown scales. 

 The narrow lance-shaped pinnae are broadest at the base, where 

 they are joined to the main rachis without the intervention of 

 stalks. The pinnules are oblong, and so deeply cut into toothed 

 lobes as to be almost pinnate. The sori, which are produced 

 mainly on the upper half of the frond, are small but numerous, 

 near the margins of the lobes ; the spores mature during July 

 and August. (Plates 94, 99.) 



There is a var. flexile, found in Forfarshire, that is some- 

 times (though surely on most inadequate grounds) regarded 

 as another species. It differs from the type in having a nar- 

 rower frond, a shorter stipes, shorter pinnae, and rather distant 

 pinnules. 



The Alpine Polypody is of very limited range in the northern 

 half of Scotland. Previously overlooked as identical with the 

 Lady Ferns among which it was growing, it was first detected 

 as distinct in 1841, when Mr. Hewett C. Watson gathered a 

 couple of fronds near Loch Erricht, in Inverness-shire. Since 

 then it has been found to extend north to Sutherland, and south 

 to Argyllshire and Perthshire, frequenting shady rocks and the 



