Ferns of British India and Ceylon. 413 
long, f inch broad, very thick and fleshy, and when young more or 
less covered with stellate hairs, the fertile ones, 2-4 inches long 
inch broad; veins immersed, areoles with copious free veinlets; sori 
in broad continuous marginal lines often at length confluent and 
covering the whole under surface, capsules mixed with a few stellate 
paraphyses. PnsL Tent. Pterid. 227, /. 10. Bedd. F. S. I. t. 55 
aitd F. S. I. t. 186 (Niphobolus nummularifolius). 
Bengal Plains ; Birma ; Ceylon ; South India, common in the 
Malabar plains, (Calicut, &c. on trees), also on the mountains, up to 
about 2,000 feet elevation, (Anamallays, Wynad, Coorg, &c.) 
(Also in Java Philippines and Japan.) 
Var. /3 Beddomei. Mr. Clarke proposes the name Beddomei 
for a specimen from the Anamallays figured by me {tab. 186, 
F. S. I.) because the fronds have stellate hairs and the scales of the 
rhizome are more pointed, but I find this stellate pubescence is 
always more or less present on the young fronds of Himalayan 
examples, and the rhizome scales are quite as hair-pointed in some 
specimens from Java, Philippines, and Japan, the fertile fronds are 
shorter and narrower in this South Indian form, and the broader 
usually sterile fronds sometimes fructify towards the apex, but I am 
not inclined to consider it even a permanent variety, as I befieve 
it runs into the type with longer fertile fronds, which is also found in 
Southern India. 
(Niphobolus nummularifolius, though I have included it in that 
genus, rather belongs here, it has exactly similar venation.) 
GENUS LXXX.— HEMIONITIS. (Z.) 
{Hemionos, a mule — the mule fern.) 
Sori continuous along the veins and copiously reticulated ; veins 
copiously anastomosing, forming numerous areoles which have rarely 
a free veinlet in them, which when present is also soriferous ; fronds 
adherent to the caudex, simple, pinnatifid, or pinnate. 
I. Hemionitis ARiFOLiA. {Bimii, Under Asplcnium.) Caudex 
