DESCRIPTION OF SPECIES. 41 
AspLENIUM ForrsteRI Deb. & Ett.? 
Pl. IV, figs. 1-11. 
Asplenium Foersteri Debey and Ettingshausen, Die Urweltlichen Acrobryen (Denkschr. 
Wien. Akad., Vol. XVII, p. 193), p. 13, Pl. II, figs. 4-7, 11. 
A number of fragments of a fern have been found which in some 
respects closely approaches that described by Debey and Ettingshausen 
under the above name (loe. cit.), although the specimens which they figure 
are too few and imperfect to render the identification certain. Heer has 
also described in his Flora Arctica, Vol. III, Part II, p. 93, Pl. XXVI, fig. 1, 
a similar if not identical fern from the Upper Cretaceous rocks of Greenland, 
but his material was also fragmentary and entirely inadequate for satisfactory 
description or comparison. 
Debey and Ettingshausen refer their plant with confidence to Asple- 
nium and compare it with the living species Asplenium <Adiantum-nigrum 
and A. furcatum; but while the general aspect and mode of division of the 
small portions of the frond which they obtained correspond well with some 
species of Asplenium, the fructification, which alone would be decisive of this 
question, has not yet been found. 
Heer and Saporta compare the specimens from Aachen and Greenland 
with the fern described by Saporta in his Flore de Sézanne under the name 
Asplenium subcretaceum, a plant of very wide distribution in the Upper 
Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of Europe and America. There is certainly 
a marked resemblance between them, so that it may be fairly inferred that 
they belong to the same genus, but they are specifically distinct. The 
Marquis Saporta’s plant is evidently larger and coarser in texture, with 
stronger nervation and more acute pinnules. Mr. J. Starkie Gardner, in 
his monograph of the British Eocene Flora, now in course of publication 
by the Palsontographical Society, has referred Aspleniwm subcretaceum to 
the genus Anemia, arguing that the absence of all traces of fructification 
among the great number of specimens of this fern found in Europe and 
America may be accepted as evidence that the sterile and fertile fronds 
were separated. This question, however, will be decided rather by time 
