194 
ASPIDIACE.E, 
which is an excellent description of this species ; and the Lin- 
nean authentic specimen, although very small and in a wretched 
state, has no character that contravenes such a conclusion, while 
the remarkable involucres (some of which are still in good pre- 
servation, and closely agree with that figured at page 191), and 
the toothed but not spined divisions of the pinnules, are rather 
in favour of its being a dwarf individual of that species. Hudson, 
in his first edition, quotes the description by Linneus in the ‘ Spe- 
cies Plantarum,’ and gives as its only habitat “the moist fissures 
of rocks near Keswick, in the county of Westmoreland.”* Thus 
far all the evidence appears in favor of the supposition that the 
Polypodiwn fragrans of both authors was the Lastrma rigida of 
the present work ; and it may be remarked, in allusion to the 
small size which is insisted on by Linneus and by Amman, and 
is observable also in the Ifinnean specimen, that the average 
height of this fern on the continent is nine or twelve inches, and 
that Sadler gives its height in Hungary at half a foot to a foot. 
We must now place the subject in another light. In his ‘Man- 
tissa,’ a work of the highest authority, we find Linneus giving 
a second description of Polypodium fragrans^ from a French spe- 
cimen, totally at variance with that in his ‘ Species Plantarum 
it is as follows : “ Fronds bipinnate, pinnae ovate sublobate ob- 
tuse, beneath naked, the margin reflexed and the fructification 
marginal.”t In this description it appears to me that the obtuse 
pinnae (evidently pinnules) naked beneath, with reflexed margins 
and marginal fructification, are the characters of Lastrcea Ore' 
opteris ; few botanists have gathered Oreopteris without ob- 
serving that the margins of the pinnules if not originally reflexed 
almost immediately become so. Hudson, in his second edition, 
gives this second description as his character of the plant,4 so 
that we are left in the pleasing belief that in the first instance 
both authors described rigida^ in the second both Oreopteris. 
Abler botanists must hereafter decide what course is to be 
Habitat in rimis petrarum humidis prope Keswick in comitatu Westmor- 
landico.— Flora Anglica, 388 of the first edition. 
f Polypodium frondibus bipinnatis : pinnis ovatis sublobatis obtusis subtus 
nudis, margine reflexis, fructificationibus.niarginalibus. — Mant. ii. 307. 
I Flora Anglica, ii, 4.57 of the second edition. 
