Prats 28. 
PTERIS (Lirroprocuta?) LEPTopHYLLA, Sw. 
Slender-leaved Pteris. 
Prenis (Litobrochia) leptophylla ; caudex small, subtuberiform ; stipites tufted, 
slender, stramineous, a span to a foot long, scaleless; fronds 4-5 inches to a 
span long, pale green, thin, membranaceous, pellucid, deltoid-acuminate, 
subdentate, bipinnate, tripinnate below ; pinnules linear, acuminate, broader 
in the sterile plant, and deeply and long-setosely serrate, at the apex only so 
in the fertile plant, all the pinnz and pinnules more or less decurrent on 
the winged rachises ; veins free and forked in the narrow pinnules, in the 
broader ones with only a single and often interrupted series of areoles next 
the costa (as in Campteria). 
Prexis leptophylla. Sw. ix Act. Holm. 1817, p. 10. Ag. Plerid. p. 57. Presi, 
Tent. Pterid. p. 145. Hook. Sp. Fil. v. 2. p, 216. 
Prenrts spinulosa. Raddi, Syn. Fil. Bras. n.115. Fil. Bras. p. 47. ¢.10 and 
70 bis. 
CHEILANTHES spinulosa. Link. 
Lrrozrocuta leptophylla. 2%ée, Gen. Fil. p. 135. J. Sm. Cat. Cult. Ferns, p. 37. 
Moore and Houlston, in Gard. Mag. of Bot. v. 3. p. 126. 
Has. Brazil, abundant about Rio, gathered by various travellers and collectors. 
South Brazil, Sellow. Cultivated at Kew. 
A delicate and graceful Fern, peculiar, as far as we at present 
know, to Brazil. It is one of the many species which throws a 
great doubt on my mind, of the propriety of multiplying the 
genera of Ferns on the grounds of venation only. We have here 
a Fern which the followers of Linnzeus and Swartz, and we may 
add Brown, would have no difficulty in recognizing as a Pferis : 
but unfortunately in its venation it partakes of two, if not three, 
modern genera; much of it has the free venation of true P/eris 
(Hupteris), more perhaps of Campteria ; rarely do the areoles 
form more than a costal series (constituting Campteria), so as 
to satisfactorily associate with Zétodrochia : nevertheless, Presl 
places this plant in true Péeris (notwithstanding that he is the 
author of Campteria), while Moore, as well as others, who main- 
tains the genus Campteria “as a useful group between Pteris and 
Litobrochia,” refers it to the latter genus par préférence. This 
observation is made in no carping spirit, but to show that by 
this minute multiplication of genera upon no solid foundations, 
while it perplexes the tyro and increases the difficulty of the 
JUNE Ist, 1861. 
