THEIR NOMENCLATURE. 453 
distinctions of the ferns which have been bundled together under 
the same name of spinulosa. Two of the species included under 
spinulosa by Mr. Bentham, Sir W. Hooker, and other botanists of 
the highest authority (the spinosa and multiflora of Newman, the 
spinulosa and dilatata of this volume), are quite easily dis- 
tinguished by their root-like stems or rhizomes at all seasons of 
the year; so that a thousand plants of them promiscuously 
mingled in the winter, with every frond cut away, could still be 
sorted into their two kinds; perhaps without a single mistake, if 
no plants of less age than half a dozen years should be mingled 
among them. And yet, strange to say, a very recent and able 
writer on the Ferns of Europe (Milde) prints such an erroneous 
statement on this head, as almost to force a doubt whether he had 
ever seen both of these ferns alive. He writes “ Rhizoma Aspidii 
spinulosi nullo modo ab A. dilatato differt.” Mr. Newman tells a 
different tale in the ‘ History of British Ferns;’ although perhaps 
he rather over-states (or un-clearly states) the differences, instead 
of denying them altogether; thus :— 
L. spinulosa. ‘< Caudex stout, slowly but extensively creeping.” 
L. dilatata. ‘‘Caudex large and tufted; I have never found it 
either horizontally elongated or branched.” 
The spreading caudex of L. spinulosa had been correctly repre- 
sented in ‘ English Botany,’ no. 1460; a plate strangely referred 
to by Hooker and Arnott, as a figure of L. recurva. 
A record in four words may be seen on page 411 of this 
volume, the detailed explanation of which will shew us a practical 
refutation of Milde’s statement, and equally practical confirmation 
of Newman's description. The four words are “ West Inverness ; 
Mrs. Maskelyne!” When my manuscript for the page quoted 
from was sent to the printer, I was not aware of any sufficiently 
reliable record for true spinulosa farther northward than Perth- 
shire. Before receiving the printer's proof of page 411 I had been 
shewn examples of that fern brought from Inverness-shire by the 
Lady named. She knew it apart from dilatata by the loose or 
less-tufted crowns of leaves, consequent on the branched and 
horizontally spreading character of the rhizome. Now, if the 
