BEAUTIFUL FERNS. 
7^^ 
so that they are slightly narrowed towards the base ; and in 
this character lies one of the readiest distinctions between 
this fern and those large forms of A. cristatum, which have 
occasionally been mistaken for A. Goldianmn; for in that 
other species the greatest breadth of the pinnae is uniformly 
at the base. 
The segments of the pinnae are from fifteen to twenty 
each side the midrib: the incisions do not extend quite to 
the midrib, so that the latter is narrowly winged, and the 
pinnae are pinnatifid rather than pinnate. The segments are 
from nine to eighteen lines long, and about three lines wide : 
they are set rather obliquely on the midrib, and are often 
slightly curved upwards, or falcate. They are obtuse or 
somewhat acute, and have the edges crenate, or more or less 
distinctly serrate with sharp incurved teeth. 
The veins are free, and are pinnately forked into from 
three to five slender oblique veinlets, of which the lowest 
one on the upper side is the longest, and bears a fruit-dot 
near its base. The fruit-dots are seldom or never found on 
the two or three lowest pinnae, but on the rest they are ar- 
ranged in a row each side the midveins of the segments, and 
much nearer the midveins than the margins. There are in 
all from ten to twenty to a segment. 
The indusia are larger than in most of the related spe- 
cies, flat, perfectly smooth, orbicular with a very narrow sinus, 
and slightly erose-crenulate on the margin. In the second 
edition of Grays Manual it is said that the indusium is “often 
