PERNS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 31 



2. Gymnogbamma (Gymnogramma). 



1. G. leptophylla (Fine4eaved Gymnogramma). — 

 Fronds egg -shaped, twice - pinnate ; pinnee roundish, 

 wedge-shaped, three-lobed, the lobes cut and toothed, 

 blunt. This pretty fragile little fern is a biennial plant, 

 very well known in the countries at the South of 

 Europe, and a native of the Atlantic Islands, as well as 

 of Jersey. In the latter island it is not an uncommon 

 plant on grassy hedgebanks, and by the side of rivulets. 

 For some years past its growth in Jersey has led some 

 botanists to enumerate it among British ferns, but it 

 appears also to grow in some spots of the United King- 

 dom. A correspondent of the Gardener s Chronicle for 

 January, 1853, sent for inspection to Professor Lindley 

 a specimen of this fern found in Britain, and, as he ob- 

 serves, entirely new to this country. The writer avoided 

 giving the locaUty, doubtless from the apprehension 

 that if he did so, some botanists might visit the spot, 

 and entirely eradicate the fern, in order to increase the 

 stores of their own Fernery or Herbarium. He remarks : 

 " This morning I examined the place where it was 

 gathered last year, and found that it is coming up plen- 

 tifully again. It is growing in a clay soil, on a bank at 

 the foot of a hiU, and is much overshadowed with ivy and 

 larger ferns. AspUnium lanceoldtum grows plentifully 

 all round it, and the bank is in that part covered with 

 a small round lichen. The situation is very damp and 

 much sheltered, and the fern is scattered over a surface 

 of two or three yards ; but I can find no trace of it on 

 any other part of the bank, and I have never met with 



