496 The Botanical Gazette. [December, 
apex, pinnately divided into from twelve to twenty pair of 
elliptic-lanceolate deeply pinnatifid sessile pinnae, the lower- 
most pair as a rule introrse, apices acuminate, the obtuse 
oblique or oblong divisions entire or slightly toothed, the 
basal divisions of the lower pinnaz sometimes cut quite to 
the midrib, margins only partially revolute in fruit, but the 
whole pinna often conduplicate, texture herbaceous, surfaces, 
especially along the midribs, finely pubescent, the margins 
ciliately so, color varying, even in contiguous plants, from 
light to dark green, turning brown with age; rachis stram- 
ineous; venation simple, pinnate, rarely, in one abnormal 
plant only as far as I have seen, with a few of the lower veins 
once forked: sori much larger than in either of its congeners, 
indusia finely glandular, sporangia and spores brown when 
mature. 
Habitat: Woodland swamps, thriving best in deep shade 
near cool moist hummocks, in beds of sphagnum. Originally 
collected in Seabrook, Essex co., Mass., about 1880, by 
Raynal Dodge of Newburyport, and more recently by him 
there, and also in Salisbury in several localities. Found 
growing abundantly on Indian Point, Georgetown, Maine, by 
myself in June, 1893, and in nearly full possession of a deep 
swamp in the Blue Hills Reservation, Quincy, Mass., Sept. 
1894. Ithas also been collected in Purgatory Swamp, Dedham, 
Mass., by Judge J. R. Churchill, Sept., 1889, and there are 
two fronds from Stoneham, Mass., without date, in the collec- 
tion of ferns bequeathed to the Appalachian Club by the late 
Mr. E. H. Hitchings. There is every probability of its hav- 
ing been collected many times as A. Thelypteris or A. Noveb- 
aia and botanists should compare their specimens care- 
‘fully. é 
This fern is intermediate between A. 7%) helypterts and A. 
Noveboracense showing resemblances to ‘both. There are, 
however, few species in any one genus that are separate 
from one another by stronger and more distinctive characters 
than those which separate it from those two ferns, and the 
only explanation for its having so long escaped recognition is 
to be found in the fact that no one would think of looking 
for, or expect to find among the ferns a new species within 
the limits of the Manual, such varying forms as might be 
noticed naturally being referred to the nearest species. 
Once attention is called to it, however, its recognition be- 
comes comparatively easy and no one would a second time 
mistake it for A. Thelypteris, from which it is distinguished 
