438 Ferns of British India and Ceylon. 



This fern is not known from North India (Mr. Clarke's Chitta- 

 gong specimens being costata), it has generally fewer and larger 

 pinna? than contaminans, sometimes up to 2 inches broad, and they 

 are never quite sessile, the venation differs considerably, the primary 

 veins are much more conspicuous or closer together, the areoles 

 narrow and generally with an acute apex, the lowest ones empty, the 

 others with often only one free excurrent veinlet (and then the 

 venation is quite that of Meniscium), there are, however, often two or 

 sometimes three excurrent veinlets, which are very irregular, free or 



anastomosing amongst them- 

 selves, or with the superior areole. 



12. Gymnopteris costata. 

 ( Wall.) Rhizome creeping, fur- 

 nished with subulate scales ; 

 stipes up to 1 \ feet long ; fronds 

 up to 2 feet long or more, pin- 

 nate, pinna? up to 14 inches long 

 by 3 inches broad, petiolate, 

 acuminate, margin entire, sinuate, 

 or crenate ; primary veins very 

 prominent and generally much 

 raised, close together, areoles 

 numerous, but varying with the 

 breadth of the pinna?, costal 

 ones small (sometimes obsolete) 

 empty, several excurrent veinlets 

 from all the other areoles which 

 sometimes anastomosing. Wall. 

 Cat. 26. Bedd. F.B. I. 113. Hook. Sp. Fil. v. 262, deltigerum and 

 undulatum, Wall. Cat. 59 and 140. Bedd. F. B. I. 114 and 115, are 

 only abnormal forms, such as occur more or less in nearly all the 

 other species of Gymnopteris and cannot be recorded as varieties. 

 (Mr. Clarke has again transferred the former, which was Meniscium 

 of Wallich, to that genus, but he now acknowledges that he was 

 wrong, and that the venation is different to Meniscium, the same 



GYMNOPTERIS COSTATA. [Wall.) 



are irregular, sometimes free and 



