BEAUTIFUL FERNS. IO9 
from Aspidium cristatmn or A. spinulosum. The stalks arc 
chaffy when young with ovate ferruginous shining scales, 
most of which drop off as the season advances. The section 
of the stalk shows about five roundish fibro-vascular bundles, 
the two anterior ones largest, and with a slight furrow be- 
tween them, which deepens as the fronds wither, or when they 
are dried for preservation. 
The fronds grow in a circle or crown, several from the 
apex of the root-stock, and stand fully three feet high in the 
largest plants. They are of a deep herbaceous green, moder- 
ately firm in texture, smooth above, and provided with a few 
scattered minute chaffy scales on the lower surface. The 
early fronds are usually tall, narrowly oblong-lanceolate and 
fertile, the lowest pinnae broadest at the very base, and hav- 
ing the superior basal pinnules but little smaller than those 
on the inferior side. These larger pinnules are seldom 
over an inch long. The next few pairs of pinnae are grad- 
ually a little longer and narrower, becoming more oblong- 
lanceolate in shape. The pinnules are mostly distinct, ob- 
long-ovate, acutish, adnate to a narrowly winged secondary 
rachis, and pinnatifid-toothed with short spinulosely serrate 
lobes, the upper pinnules of course more and more con- 
fluent and only simply serrate. The sori are rather numer- 
ous, not large, and either medial or sub-terminal on the 
veinlets a little nearer the midvein than the margin. The 
indusium is dotted with minute stalked glands, and a very 
few similar glands may be detected on the lower surface of 
