BEAUTIFUL FERNS. 9 1 
an opportunity of explaining the matter to Mr. Baker, then 
at work on the Synopsis Filicum, and not long after, I was 
surprised, and I need not say pleased, by finding that he 
had driven to Hooker’s C. tomcntosa the name it now bears. 
The root-stock is short, assurgent, and chaffy with rather 
rigid slender-pointed scales, most of them furnished with a 
dark rhidnerve. The stalks are tufted, and are perhaps a 
little slenderer than those of C tomentosa. They are chaffy 
throughout, but more especially at the base, with narrow pale- 
ferruginous scales, intermixed with still slenderer paleaceous 
hairs. The section is slightly flattened on the anterior side. 
The exterior sheath is firm; inside of it is brownish paren- 
chyma, and in the middle a semicircular fibro-vascular bundle, 
the ducts in the centre of it arranged in a figure much like 
a letter X. 
The fronds are considerably smaller than in C. tomentosa. 
They are similarly oblong-lanceolate and tripinnate, the ulti- 
mate pinnules being very numerous and rather more closely 
crowded than in the other species just referred to. The 
pubescence is harsher and not so webby on the upper side, 
and is decidedly heavier and more matted on the under sur- 
face. The scales of the branches, or secondary rachises, are 
broader and shorter than those of the stalk and are very 
conspicuous in young fronds. In older fronds they fall away, 
to some extent, and are then less abundant. 
The pinnules are rather rounder and less oval than in 
C. tomentosa, and though they are somewhat purse-shaped. 
