BEAUTIFUL FERNS. 
I2I 
narrow long-pointed soft bright-brown scales, which in the 
specimens examined are destitute of midnerve. 
The stalks are rigid and wiry, terete, nearly black in 
color, but with a slight reddish tinge, and usually more or 
less pubescent with very narrow chaffy hairs, which are often 
more abundant and harsher along the rachises, making them 
almost hirsute. Pellcsa glabella was founded on specimens 
from Missouri and the North-West, which had the stalk 
perfectly smooth, and the chaff of the root-stock a trifle 
wider than usual. The section of the stalk shows a single 
U-shaped fibro-vascular bundle, and a strong outer scleren- 
chymatous sheath. 
The fronds are developed late in the Spring, and remain 
green through the next Winter. They are almost coriaceous 
in texture, smooth and dark-bluish-green above, paler, and 
sometimes slightly chaffy beneath. They are from a few 
inches to about a foot in length, and vary in outline from 
ovate to oblong-lanceolate. In seedling plants the earliest 
fronds are round-cordate, the next cordate-ovate, and then fol- 
low trifoliate, pinnate, and finally mature bipinnate fronds. 
The largest fronds have about five pairs of compound pinnae, 
each wdth from three to eleven pinnules, and above these are 
from four to six pairs of simple pinnae, besides the terminal 
one, which is often the longest of all. 
The pinnules and the simple pinnae of the sterile fronds 
are commonly oval, and not more than half an inch long, 
but those of the fertile fronds are narrower and longer, some- 
