Corzxso.— Description of new Ferns. 309 
common species H. demissum and H. polyanthos, and with the new one H. 
erecto-alatum, particularly this last, and had its stipes been winged, and 
the wings there and on its rhachises subvertieal and deeply erisped, as in 
H. erecto-alatum, I should have been inclined to have set it down as a 
variety of that species, notwithstanding its extra-large and peculiar involu- 
. eres and sori. Apparently the smaller the frond the more profuse its sori, 
which in some small specimens is densely thick and heavy, and then con- 
tracting the whole frond. Its clusters of sori are also coloured bright-red 
when very young, long before they become mature. 
Hab. In open woods, in the Seventy-mile Bush between Norsewood 
and Danneverke, both on the ground (but not growing thickly) and climb- 
ing trees— particularly the trunks of the tree-ferns, arborescent Dicksonie— 
1881, 1882. 
IV. Asplenium, Linn. 
Asplenium anomodum, n. sp. 
Plant small, suberect, spreading ; caudex very short and stout, scarcely 
any ; stipites thickly tufted, 1-24 inches long, rather slender, green, densely 
clothed at base with very large reticulated glossy black scales; roots 
fibrous, not long, compact, numerous, brown, thickly covered with short 
shining hairs; fronds, 4-6 (living ones) to each plant, 2-44 inches long, 
14-2 inches broad, ovate-acuminate, pinnate, with a long terminal obtuse 
pinna subrhomboid-lanceolate, about 2 inches long or twice the length of 
the largest of the lateral pinnæ, with sometimes a small lobe at the base ; 
pinne, 8-4 pairs, petiolate, distant, patent, alternate, rarely subopposite, 
6-14 lines long, 8-6 lines broad, ovate, sometimes broadly elliptie, dimi- 
diate, obtuse and rounded at apex, generally decreasing in size from the 
middle of the frond downwards; the base cuneate and excised below, and 
truncate and subauricled above; colour grass green, a shade lighter below ; 
margins cartilaginous, coloured, aud bluntly serrated, often only crenu- 
late; petioles slender ; texture membranaceous, glabrous above, scaly below 
on the veins with scattered long fine dark and scarious scales, having 
divaricating laciniæ at base (almost stellate), similar in texture to those at 
base of stipites, only very much smaller; veins apparent, subflabellate, 
simple, and forked, with no distinct costa, subclavate at apices and not 
extending to margin; rhachis slender, narrow, channelled above, and (with 
stipe) scaly, with long twisted dark scarious scales like those on veins of* 
frond. 
Sori generally few, distant, scattered, and very irregularly distributed, 
1, 2, or 8 (and sometimes, though rarely, 5, 6) on a pinna, occasionally 
more, 8-18, on the terminal pinna; at first long, afterwards broad-elliptie, 
