—79— 



Christmas fern, and it seems much better to call it Poly- 

 stichum Plaschnickianum. The indusia, of course, are 

 circular and attached to the fronds by their depressed 

 centers. The species is abundant in many mountainous 

 regions of the American tropics, but seldom grows at 

 altitudes of less than five thousand feet. 



SOME MEXICAN FERNWORTS. 



By B. D. Gilbert. 



My son, B. T. Gilbert, spent the winter of 1904-5 in the 

 province of Oaxaca, Mexico, and I charged him before 

 going away to collect for me anything in the shape of 

 ferns or mosses that he might meet with. It is to be 

 stated that he knows nothing about these plants scien- 

 tifically, hardly enough to know whether a particular 

 plant is a fern or something else. But out of all the 

 fronds and scraps of plants that he brought home there 

 was. only one which was not either a pteridophyte or a 

 moss or a lichen, and that one was a Tillandsia. which a 

 non-botanist might readily be pardoned for regarding as 

 a true moss. 



The pteridophytes he procured were fourteen in num- 

 ber, of which I present below an alphabetical list. Mere 

 lists of plants, coming from a far-away country that is 

 seldom visited by a botanist, and giving the approximate 

 localities of their growth, may become highly valuable 

 to the future collector. I have made free use of Mar- 

 tens and Galeotti's " Fougeres de Mexique " in deter- 

 mining the species, but more than half of them do not 

 appear in that work. It is apparent, therefore, that there 

 is excellent opportunity for obtaining new material in 

 that region. If a person who knows nothing of botany 

 can pick up casually such a lot of species as this list con- 

 tains, what might be accomplished by a good botanist 

 making a thorough study of the region? The elevation 

 renders the climate temperate and bracing in the winter 

 season, and highly favorable for the labor of collecting. 



