838 Transactions.— Botany. 
Sir W. Hooker, in his ‘ Species Filicum,” gives a full description of P. 
australe, (in which, however, other allied plants from other countries, des- 
cribed by other botanists, are also by him included,)—in his description, 
he says,—‘‘ at the base and also on the stipites deciduously hairy, the rest 
at least in maturity glabrous.” Baker also, in his late edition of ** Synopsis 
Filicum,” describes P. australe as having, ‘‘ Rhizome creeping, texture coria- 
ceous, stipes and both sides naked or slightly ciliated,* and Dr. Sir Jos. 
Hooker, both in his ‘*Flora Nove-Zealande,” and his ‘Handbook of the 
New Zealand Flora,” describes P. australe as being “‘ glabrous, pubescent, 
pilose, or ciliate,” etc., ete.-—done, as I take it, and as I have already 
observed, to embrace all our New Zealand allied plants in one specific des- 
cription ; believing them to be but one species; but there are great natural 
and characteristic differences separating them. 
The rather coarse and long villous adpressed hairs on the under side of 
P. paradoxum, growing across and hiding the sori, and giving it there a 
kind of coarse matted arachnoid appearance, the persistent stout marginal 
rufous hairs, and the numerous large and reticulated basal scales,—together 
with each plant being of strictly defined single cespitose growth,—are good 
natural characters not pertaining to P. australe, vera. 
Polypodium (? Goniopteris) pennigerum, Forst., var. hamiltonii, W.C. 
Rhizome erect, tufted: fronds 15-18 inches high, glabrous, oblong-lanceo- 
late, very membraneous, pinnate, slightly pinnatifid at top, light-green ; 
stipes and rhachis slender, subsucculent; rhachis and mid-rib hairy above, 
hairs light-brown ; pinnules opposite, distant, slightly petiolate, broadly 
linear-elongate, not acuminate, pinnatifid to below the veins very nearly 
to mid-rib, middle ones 3 inches long, 1 inch broad, lowermost pairs very 
distant, small and auricled upwards, the upper ones are sometimes forked 
near tips ; lobes large, 5-6 lines long, 8 lines broad, very irregular, puckered 
and crisped, deeply cut into 4-5 incisions on each side, truncate, retuse, and 
sharply pointed, the sinus between the lobes large and semicircular; ves, 
4-5 pairs to each lobe, opposite, distant, free throughout; sori globose, few, 
only a single sorus central on each of lowermost pair of veins: stipes 2-2 
inches long, sealy at base; scales ovate, obtuse, rich dark-brown, and finely 
reticulated. 
Hab.—Wet rocky sides of mountain streamlets, country S.W. from 
Napier, North Island ; found by Mr. A. Hamilton in 1881. 
This is an elegant species (or new variety) of fern, and will, I have ~ 
doubt (if it continues true), become a garden favourite ; at present, plants 
of it are thriving well in Mrs. Tiffen’s fernery in Napier. For some little : 
* Loeztit., p. 322. 
