87. FILICES. 599 
Cystopteris (fragilis) Dickieana, “ Sim.” Newm. 
Province - 15. Aberdeen; Dickie! 
Syn. 13879. Phytol. iv. 716. Bot. Gaz. ii. 810. “This fern is 
known to botanists from a single locality only, a sea cave near 
Aberdeen, where it was found by Dr. Dickie;” Newman Hist. ed. 
8, page 94. The fern itself is rather an aberrant production or 
monstrosity than a varietal segregate, much less a true species. 
I should have small confidence indeed in the botanical judgment 
and experience of any one who could suppose it to have tenable 
claim to be held a distinct species. Mr. Newman’s figure, in the 
History, page 98 of edition third, represents a very extreme state 
of it. (I have seen a corresponding instance, in barren fronds of 
Adiantum-nigrum grown in the corner of a room where the light 
was dim.) Four wild specimens of the fern are placed in my 
herbarium, from the Aberdeen locality, and given to me by 
Professor Dickie himself. Three of these, which make the nearer 
approximation to Mr. Newman’s figure, are entirely barren. The 
fourth is fertile or sori-bearing, and is at least half way from that 
figure to the ordinary fragilis as represented in the work of Mr. 
Newman; it might have quite well passed for dentata, apart from 
the dilated barren fronds. Moreover, my garden-grown examples, 
living and dried, all diverge farther from Newman’s figure, than 
do the three barren fronds given to me by Dr. Dickie from the 
wild locality. If I were to judge exclusively by the fronds of 
Dickieana, which hitherto have come under my own inspection, 
IT ought to suspect the sori-bearing fragment (represented alongside 
Newman’s figure of the barren state) of being purely a fancy- 
sketch, a bit from a barren frond made fertile by the pencil of the 
draughtsman. Mr. Newman will act wisely if he carefully pre- 
serve the scrap of frond so represented, in evidence of the truth 
of his figure. Perhaps a similar tuft of barren fronds could be 
produced on a plant grown under cover and in dimmed light ; but 
I should despair of ever re-producing a fertile frond of that dilated 
and overlapping form ; is it not a great rarity ? 
Cystopteris alpina, Desv. 
Provinces 1-3. Hssex, supposed to have been planted. 
Alien. Cyb. iii. 259. A letter from Mr. Edward Parfitt, of the 
Exeter Institution, dated in 1869, informed me that C. alpina 
had been ‘discovered by Miss Caroline Johnson, near Diptford, 
Totness.” Mr. James Britten kindly gave me a frond, taken 
from a root sold by a Dealer, who had stated that he got it 
in Westmoreland in 1864. 
Polystichum (lobatum) aculeatum, Anglor. 
Provinces 1- 3-12. And doubtless elsewhere. 
Syn. 1383. Cyb. iii. 261—2. Although aculeatum, as English 
botanists usually apply the name, is a more developed form than 
