438 
Ferns of British India and Ceylon. 
This fern is not known from North India (Mr. Clarke's Chitta- 
gong specimens being costata), it has generally fewer and larger 
pinnae than contaminans, sometimes up to 2 inches broad, and they 
are never quite sessile, the venation differs considerably, the primary 
veins are much more conspicuous or closer together, the areoles 
narrow and generally with an acute apex, the lowest ones empty, the 
others with often only one free excurrent veinlet (and then the 
venation is quite that of Meniscium), there are, however, often two or 
sometimes three excurrent veinlets, which are very irregular, free or 
anastomosing amongst them- 
selves, or with the superior areole. 
12. Gymnopteris costata. 
( Wall.) Rhizome creeping, fur- 
nished with subulate scales ; 
stipes up to li feet long ; fronds 
up to 2 feet long or more, pin- 
nate, pinnae up to 14 inches long 
by 3 inches broad, petiolate, 
acuminate, margin entire, sinuate, 
or crenate ; primary veins very 
prominent and generally much 
raised, close together, areoles 
numerous, but varying with the 
breadth of the pinn^, costal 
ones small (sometimes obsolete) 
empty, several excurrent veinlets 
from all the other areoles which 
N? 266. 
GYMNOPTERIS COSTATA. ( Wall.) 
are irregular, sometimes free and sometimes anastomosing. Wall. 
Cat 26. Bedd. i^ ^. /. 113. Hook. Sp. Fil. v. 262, deltigerum and 
undulatum. Wall. Cat. ^()and 140. Bedd. F. B. I. 114 and 115, are 
only abnormal forms, such as occur more or less in nearly all the 
other species of Gymnopteris and cannot be recorded as varieties. 
(Mr. Clarke has again transferred the former, which was Meniscium 
of WalHch, to that genus, but he now acknowledges that he was 
wrong, and that the venation is different to Meniscium, the same 
