28 ASPLENIUM PONTANUM. 
covered by an opaque, white, oblong skin (indusium), 
more rounded on the loose edge, which is turned 
towards the mid-vein, than on that edge by which it is 
attached to the leaflet; the loose edge being, also, 
waved and rather toothed." (Moore's Handbook of 
British Ferns. 150.) 
Many botanists have doubted the claim of this Fern 
to be considered a British species, but we think its 
claim as fully established. That it has been found but 
seldom, and in few places, is no counter-evidence. It 
is often passed by, probably, without examination, being 
mistaken for Asplenium trichomanes, and other common 
species. 
The first to announce this as a British Fern was Mr. 
Hudson, in the first edition of his Flora Anglica, pub- 
lished during the year 1762. He states that it grew 
upon " rocky places near Wybourn, in Westmoreland." 
Mr. Bolton, in his Filices Britannic, or History of 
British Proper Ferns, published in 1786, states that 
this Fern was found on the walls of Agmondesham 
(Amersham) Church, in Buckinghamshire. In 1838, 
Mr. Readhead found it on rocks in Wharncliffe Woods, 
Yorkshire. Mr. Charles Johnson discovered it, in 1845, 
on an old wall on Tooting Common, Surrey. More 
recently it has been found by the Eev. W. Hawker, on 
a wall at Ashford, near Petersfield, in Hampshire. Mr. 
Shepherd, of Liverpool, sent specimens to Mr. Moore, 
which bad been collected at Matlock, in Derbyshire. 
Mr. Hutcheson, formerly gardener at Boxley Abbey, 
Kent, and a Fern cultivator, gathered it in 1842, on 
