134 HISTORY OF BRITISH FERNS. 



north of England, growing at considerable elevations. It 

 was first found at Ingleborough, in Yorkshire, and has been 

 since met with on the limestone ranges of Westmoreland 

 and Lancashire. In cultivation it is usually a free-growing 

 plant, more lax than in the wild state, and one of the most 

 elegant of the larger kinds. 



LASTREA SPINULOSA, PresL The Narrow Prickly - 

 toothed, or Crested Pern. 



This is a rather erect-growing kind, with a stout stem or 

 root-stock, which becomes branched, so that several crowns 

 are generally found together forming one mass. The crowns 

 may readily be separated, and in this way the species may 

 be increased with much facility. The fronds grow from one 

 o three feet high, and are bipinnate, the pinnse 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 pinnae are broader than they 

 are towards the apex. The pinnules are of an oblong form, 

 somewhat narrowing upwards, the margins deeply incised, 

 the lobes being serrated, and the teeth somewhat spinulose; 

 this description, it should be remembered, applies to the 

 lowest pinnules on the lowest pinnse ; those towards the 

 apex of each pinna, as well as the basal ones of the pinnse 



