56 



BRITISH FERNS. 



Previously, however, to the description in the English Botany, 

 by Hooker, assigning to this fern the rank of a species, the same 

 ^ 1 author had noticed it as a variety in his 

 British Flora, 1st edition, p. 412, where it 

 stands as Aspidium spinulosum, var.y . In the 

 Herbarium of the late Sir J. E. Smith, are 

 two fronds from Davall's Herbarium, which 

 are thus labelled in Smith's hand-writing, 

 " As. rigidum. Willd. Sp. PI. Vol. v. 

 p. 265." As I think it probable that, with 

 the view of testing my accuracy by the 

 weightier authority of Smith, these fronds 

 may hereafter be examined by those 

 botanists who take an interest in establish- 

 ing the identity of species, it seems needful 

 to say that those fronds do not appear to 

 me identical with "Willdenow's description 

 or Schkuhr's figure, and certainly not with 

 the British fern I am now describing. One 

 of the fronds in question is from Dauphiny, 

 the other from Switzerland, neither there- 

 fore having any claim to be ranked as 

 British. I conceive it my duty simply to 

 point out, without venturing to rectify, the 

 error. 



The roots are long, and the rhizoma 

 large and tufted. The rachis is unusually 

 thick at the base, and very thickly clothed 

 with chaffy scales, which are more or less 

 abundant throughout its entire length. 

 The naked part of the rachis is about one- 

 fourth of its entire length. The frond is 

 nearly erect, and its habit is altogether 

 a good deal that of Lastraea Filix-mas : it is 

 lanceolate and pinnate ; the pinnae are 

 crowded, and often from twenty to thirty in 

 number on each side ; the lower ones are 

 wider at the base, shorter and more trian- 

 gular than those in the middle and upper 

 part of the frond ; they are all pinnate ; the pinnulae are some- 

 what stalked, and so deeply divided into lobes that they would 



