THE FERNS OF NORTH-WEBTERN INDIA. ill 



I hazard the following as a new and complete description of this species : — ■ 

 Flants isolated, or united in tufts. St. densely tufted, forming a thick 

 rootstock, thickly covered at base with long linear bright chesnut scales 

 from 1 and 2 in. 1., gTadually succeeded upwards by large broadlyK)vate 

 acuminate scales, with more or less broad dark-brown centres the 

 scales further up resuming the pale self -colour of those at base, and 

 becoming mixed with the pale-coloured long and narrow scales or 

 fibrilte which in diminishing size clothe the main and partial rhaohises 

 and costa, Fr. lanceolate-acuminate, sometimes broadest near base often 

 2 ft. 1., rarely 2| ft., by 3—9 ins. br.— average breadth perhaps 6 

 ms,, always bipinnate : pinn, always broadest at base because 

 auricled, very gradually narrowed to the quickly acuminate apex 

 always though shortly stalked, distant at base but beoomuag crowded and 

 imbricated towards apex : pinnl. 12—18 paii-s, all distinctly stalked except 

 near apex of the frond, close and often overlapping each other at base ; 

 in simplest fmn — rhomboidal with a curved apex or ovate-acuminate 

 entire and cut away towards the base on inferior side and always broadly 

 am-icled on superior side, sharply and stiffly toothed at apex of pinnule 

 and auricle and hwdly toothed elsewhere except obscurely on the superior 

 side above the auricle, in less simple forms the pinnules prolonged and more 

 or less lobed or pinnatifid with sharp stiff teeth on each lobe or seotnent 

 on both Bides, the lowest of all pinnatifid and sharply toothed ; up to 

 li in. long) and cut down nearly to the rhachis with several (up to five) 

 pairs of narrow segments ; all lobes or segments furnished with hard sharp 

 mucronate teeth, never merely aristate ; Texture vei7 coriaceous, frond 

 heavy ; upper surface glabrous and shiny ; lower— covered on veins with 

 small pale-coloured fibrillse and occasional shorter and broader minute 

 scales : colour greyish green ; vm. obscure, best seen on underside : 

 4—6 groups on each side of the costa, pinnate or forked in the lobes, 

 reaching almost to the margin : sori large, crowded, and ultimately extend- 

 ing across several veinlets, absent from centre of pinn* and apex of 

 pinnule, but occasionally found on auricle ; receptacle consisting of 

 numerous persistent fibres in a bunch ; involucres large, cucullate, pereistent, 

 stalked, with dark centres (the sporangia when ripe spreading widely 

 beyond the edge), veins of involucres radiating and connected by scalari- 

 form veinlets. 

 Don's description, though perhaps fuller and better than those he wrote of 

 ^ome other species, seems either to have been thought insufficient or to have 

 been disregarded by subsequent authors, which must be my excuse for writing 

 a n w one. I will, however, give extracts to show that it ' does not apply to 



