116 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
Prof. E. W. Berry? has described as new, under the 
name Matonidium americanum, a species of fossil fern 
found in certain sandstone formations in Colorado. 
According to Prof. Berry’s restoration, this fern. bore, 
in life, numerous narrowly lanceolate pinnae, themselves 
pinnatifid, arranged fan-wise and spreading horizon- 
tally at the top of a stout stipe. This is the habit of 
its living relative, Matonia pectinata. 
‘The genus Matonidium belongs to the family Maton- 
taceae which now consists of but one genus, with three 
species, all of which occur only in the uplands of the 
Malay Peninsula and the island of Borneo. They are 
survivors of a dying race which in earlier geologic times 
inhabited a vastly wider area. Representatives of 
one of the older fossil genera of the family, Laccopteris, 
have been found in both hemispheres, as far north 
as Greenland and Spitzbergen and as far south as 
Australia. Of Matonidium three species are known, 
one found in Europe, one in western North America 
and one in both regions. It may be noted that this 
distribution is strikingly like that of various living 
Species or pairs of closely related species--such as, 
for instance, Dryopteris Oreopteris, Athyrium alpestre 
and A. americanum, Polystichum aculeatum and P. 
Dudleyi. 
Mr. Maxon? has described two new ” species; of 
tropical American ferns. One, Alsophila scabriuscula, 
Is a tree-fern of Guatemala and the State of &Vera 
Cruz, Mexico. The other, Cheilanthes castanea, is the 
* Berry, E. 
distribution of the Matoniaceae. Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 46: 285-294, 
Pg eR Pe 
a phila 
Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington $2: 125-126. June 
