56 AMERICAN FERN JOURNAL 
of L. complanatum, maintaining that they differ from 
it no more than L. obscurum and its variety dendroideum 
from each other, and by similar characters. In matters 
nomenclatorial, he makes a further assault on the un- 
fortunate name Dryopteris. Nieuwland has already 
pointed out that this name is antedated by Thelypteris 
of Schmidel (1762). Mr. Farwell goes. still further 
back and takes up Filix of Hill. His reason is that 
Hill in his ‘Family Herbal,” published in 1755, uses 
the “binomials” Filix Mas and Filix Foemina as the- 
captions of paragraphs descriptive of the male fern 
and the bracken, the former coming first. The point 
is technical; but to the present writer’s mind there is 
no doubt that Hill’s use of this name, without generic 
description of his own or reference to another, utterly 
fails to fulfill the conditions of valid publication laid 
down in the Vienna Rules and that, under these rules, 
at least, the correct name for the genus is Thelypter?s. 
In view, however, of the hundreds of new combinations 
required, and the many changes of name the genus has 
already suffered, no one has shown himself very eager 
to take it up, though Dr. Rydberg has made a beginning 
in that direction. 
Other points of interest in Mr. Farwell’s paper are 
as follows: He suggests that, since Asplenium pinna- 
tifidum occasionally produces fronds with lanceolate, 
acute lobes of various lengths similar to those of 4- 
ebenoides, it may also be a hybrid of the walking fern 
and the ebony spleenwort, verging toward the former 
parent as A. ebenoides toward the latter. He ar 
an enumeration of varieties of the lady fern occurring 
in Michigan, to which, however ‘(since Mr. Farwell 
wrote before Prof. Butters’s paper. noticed above, 
appeared) names are given which were originally applied 
to forms of the European lady fern and are therefore 
not applicable to the American plant; rather extensive 
hotes on Botrychium and Ophioglossum; and descriptions 
