Notes AND NEws 25 
to Cheilanthes myriophylla and to C. Fendleri. Mr. 
Maxon has now dealt with the question thus raised; 
and, by attention to certain characters, chiefly of scales, 
rootstock and hairs, which were mostly overlooked or 
misunderstood by earlier botanists, he has produced 
a clear and logical treatment of this hitherto confused 
group, which accounts satisfactorily for all of the mate, 
rial now at hand.* He finds that true C. myriophylla, 
& species originally described from South America, 
does not occur in the United States; but that we have 
four species, two of them hitherto undescribed. They 
are: a plant related to C. Clevelandii, common in Cali- 
fornia and extending into Nevada and Arizona, which 
is now named C. Covillei and in which one subspecies, 
C. Coville intertexta, is recognized; C. Fendleri, of Texas, 
Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona; C. Wootoni, of 
New Mexico and Arizona, similar in habit to the last, 
but distinguished by the ciliate scales of the under 
surface of the frond; and C. villosa Davenp., of Texas, 
New Mexico, Arizona and adjacent Mexico, the only 
one of the four which is closely related to C. myriophylla. 
Present-day intensive study is rapidly reducing the 
number of reputedly cosmopolitan species and even 
of those which have been assigned a wide and dis- 
continuous range in more than one continent. This 
result is due, not so much to finer-drawn conceptions 
of species as to the growing use in classification of certain 
characters of scales, pubescence and structure of in- 
dusium which were very generally neglected by the 
earlier writers on ferns, but which, when tested with 
the large number of specimens now available, have 
proved to be among the most reliable and satisfactory 
§ Maxon, W. R. The lip ferns of the atgettigeds Urited States re- 
lated to Ciitathes myriophylla, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washi ngton 31: 139- 
152. Nov. 918. 
