LASTREA. 113 



toothed Buckler Fern, is a rather erect-growing kind, with 

 a stout creeping stem or root-stock, which becomes branclied, 

 so that several crowns are generally found forming one 

 mass, these crowns being readily separable ; and in this 

 way the species may be increased with much facility. The 

 stipes is rather sparingly furnished with semi-transparent 

 scales of a broad or bluntly ovate form, in which particular 

 it agrees with cristata and uUginosa, but diftcrs from 

 dilatata and wmula. The fronds grow from one to three 

 feet high, and are bipinnate, the pinnaj having an obliquely 

 tapering form, from the inferior pinnules being larger than 

 the superior ones ; this is most obvious at the base of the 

 fronds, where the pinna) are broader than they are towards 

 the apex. The lower pinnules on the basal pinnaa are of 

 an oblong form, somewhat narrowing upwards, the margins 

 deeply incised, the lobes being serrated, and the teeth 

 somewhat spinulose ; those towards the apex of each pinna, 

 as well as the basal ones of the pinnae nearer the apex of 

 the frond, become gradually less and less compound ; so 

 that, although the margins are still furnished with spinu- 

 lose teeth, they gradually lose the deep lobes which are 

 found on the lowest pinnro. In all the more compound 

 Ferns, there is a similar difference of form according to the 



I 



