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FOLYBOTRYA vivipara. 
Viviparous Polyhotrya, 
CUYPTOGAMI A FILICES— Nat. Ord. FILI CES. 
Gen. CHAR—CapjMte sessiles globosi, in spicis nudis paniculatis aggregati 
Indusium nullum. — W. 
Polybotrya vivipara ; frondibus simpliciter pinnatis. 
P. vivipara, Hamilton's MSS. 
Root rather large, knotted, producing many coarse and branched downy 
fibres. Sterile frond placed upon a long stipes, glabrous, or only with a 
few small brown scales near the base, simply pinnated; the pinnae four 
or five inches long, lanceolate for the most part of their length, truncate 
at the base, sessile, standing out horizontally, duplicato-crenate at the 
margin, furnished in the centre with a strong midrib, and many minute 
dichotomous nerves branching off at nearly right angles from it, pale 
green. Rackis minutely scaly. 
Fertile frond equally pinnatifid, the pinnae filiform, about two or three inches 
long, filiform in the greater part of their extent, upon which are arranged 
numerous, subalternate, hemispherical, or almost globular clusters of 
naked capsules, (Fig. 1.) Each capsuk in itself spherical, pedicellate, 
reticulated, brown, opening transversely irregularly, and dispersing nu- 
merous, roundish, minute seeds. 
The genus Polybotrya is founded upon a South American 
Fern, discovered by Humboldt, and no other species of this 
singular and distinct genus seems to have been noticed by au- 
thors. My kind friend Dr Buchanan Hamilton of Leny 
House, author of " Travels in the Mysore Country, and through 
Nepaul," and who is now engaged in writing a commentary upon 
the Hortus Malabaricus, discovered, so long ago as the year 
1808, the present individual, growing in woods at Gualpara, in 
the eastern parts of Camrupa, in the East Indies. Dr Hamil- 
ton has distinguished it, in his manuscript notes, by the spe- 
cific name which I have retained to it. The specimens here 
VOL. II. 
