PELL^A ORNITHOPUS. 

 BIRD ROCK-BRAKE. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICES. 



Teli.JEA ORNITHOPUS, Hooker. — Stem tufted, three to six inches in length, rigid, erect, polished, 

 dark chestnut-brown, naked ; frond four to six inches in length and two to three inches 

 broad, deltoid, bipinnatifid ; phina: rigid, spreading, one to one and a half inches in length, 

 one-quarter to three-eighths in breadth, with numerous distantly-placed sessile pinna; on 

 each side, which are cut to the base into three linear mucronate segments, of which the 

 central one is the largest, but is not more than one and a half to two inches long; rachis 

 polished like the stipe ; texture coriaceous ; both surfaces naked, very pale glaucous green ; 

 involucre broad, coriaceous, crenate, rolled permanently over the sori (Hooker & Baker's 

 Synopsis Filicuvi). 



HOSE who are familiar with the Latin classics may re- 

 member the pretty story told in the fifth book of Ovid's 

 " Metamorphoses," wherein the daughters of Pierus, a wealthy 

 Macedonian, proud of their position and of their accomplish- 

 ments, challenged the Muses to a vocal contest, and for their 

 presumption were turned into the chattering bird known as the 

 magpie. Urania, in telling the story to Minerva, says the un- 

 fortunate girls were born in Pellaea, which is probably another 

 name for ancient Macedonia. So many of the botanists of past 

 times were so fond of selecting classical names for the genera 

 they founded, that one might be pardoned for supposing that the 

 learned German Professor Link who In 1841 first established the 

 genus Pellcua may have had this In his mind, especially as the 

 explanation of John Smith, In his " Historia Filicum," that the 

 name Is from a Greek word having reference to "the dusky 

 color of the fronds," seems hardly clear, for there Is no more of 

 "dusky" color in the fronds of Pellcra than in many other 

 ferns. But it so happens that In this case Link tells us what 

 botanists do not always tell, his reason for the name " stipes 



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