CYSTOPTEBIS DICKIEANA. 95 



The radicles are tough, numerous, and nearly black : the 

 caudex is tufted, exhibiting very conspicuously a pale brown 

 sahent crown, composed of the future fronds : the stipes is 

 short, scarcely half as long as the frond : the frond is ovate- 

 lanceolate, pinnate, compact, somewhat glabrous, and of a full 

 bright green colour : the pinnte are crowded, deflexed, broad, 

 blunt, and pinnatifid ; they are set on at an acute angle with 

 the plane of the rachis : the pinnules or lobes are crenate : the 

 fructification abundant : the clusters of capsules small, round, 

 submarginal, and generally naked : the involucre, when pre- 

 sent, is small, its margin fringed, its attachment beneath that 

 of the capsules : the seeds verrucate. 



Since, with the single exception of Mr. Sim, the original 

 describer, no author has ventured to regard C. Dickieana as 

 a species distinct from C. fragilis, a few words appear abso- 

 lutely necessary as to the propriety or otherwise of regarding 

 this fern as distinct. The objections to separating it are two : 

 — first, the present restriction of the species to a single loca- 

 lity, and that a very peculiar one ; and, secondly, the absence 

 of any obvious botanical character whereby it may be distin- 

 guished from C. fragilis. Both of these objections are my own; 

 they are difficulties first suggested by myself, and therefore I 

 am fuUy prepared to assert their importance, and shall make 

 no attempt whatever to reason them away. The propriety of 

 separating Dickieana from fragilis rests on these grounds : — 

 It is a healthy perfect plant, not monstrous or distorted, and 

 it produces its like from seed for many generations. It is re- 

 produced freely from seed, becoming a perfect weed ; whereas 

 fragilis, under similar treatment, rarely reproduces itself. Cul- 

 tivated in the same soil, and in the same pot, with fragilis, the 

 latter becomes larger and more vigorous, Dickieana smaller 

 and less vigorous : and the more care the cultivator bestows on 

 these two plants, the more will he find they recede from each 

 other ; whereas all differences between the so-called C. fragilis, 

 angustata, and dentata are speedily lost in cultivation. It is 

 true that Dickieana, under cultivation, undergoes some change : 

 its pinnae are deflexed, crowded, and partially overlapping in a 



