90 Notes on Lastrea remota {Moore). [Sess. 



sooner, but was trying to get hold of the original description 

 by Moore in the Linnean Society's Transactions of 1859, but 

 it does not appear in the Transactions of that year or of 

 the next. It may be in the Proceedings, but they are not 

 to be had in the University Library. Braun's original de- 

 scription of Aspidium remotum would naturally be the correct 

 one to go by, but I cannot get a reference to it at all. 

 Hooker, in ' Synopsis Filicum,' groups spinulosa, dilatata, and 

 femula under one species, which he calls spinulosa, and of 

 which he considers remota to be a variety, Lowe, Babington 

 (Groves), and all the authors who distinguish specifically be- 

 tween these three, seem to depend on the characters of the 

 scales (ramentse). In dilatata these have a dark centre and 

 pale margin, and are long - pointed ; in spinulosa they are 

 ovate-acute, and have no dark centre, but are entirely pale ; 

 while in semula they are pale without a dark centre, but are 

 long-pointed and laciniate (cut at the margins). In remota 

 the scales are said to be ovate-acuminate and subulate, but 

 there is nowhere any reference to the colour. 



" The Westmorland fronds you gave me bear scales which 

 correspond with that description, and are entirely pale in tint, 

 while the Loch Lomond plant has broader, larger scales, with 

 a well-marked dark centre and pale margin, like dilatata. 

 Dilatata, however, is supposed to have glands on the edge 

 of its indusium, of which I can find no trace in your plants. 

 Spinulosa has colourless, hair-like spines on the apices of the 

 segments of the pinnules ; these should be absent in remota, 

 and are so in the Westmorland fronds, while the Loch Lomond 

 fronds show them slightly. The number of vascular bundles 

 is practically the same throughout the whole of the Lastreas, 

 — that is to say, it varies in each species from about five to 

 seven or eight in the petiole, therefore is of no diagnostic use. 



" I really cannot see any relation to Filix-mas in any of 

 the ' remota ' fronds. Filix-mas seems quite a distinct, well- 

 marked species, characterised by the broad attachment of the 

 pinnules, the fact that these are not cut more than half-way 

 down, and the bluntness of their segments, along with the 

 large sori and indusium. Both the sets of ' remota ' fronds 

 you left have, on the contrary, the pinnules set on quite a 

 narrow attachment ; they are all cut considerably more than 



