212 
ASPIDIACEyE. 
the one which I reject, yet I trust the difference will be suffi- 
cient to fix it in the memory, and I am inclined to believe Roth’s 
is the original name, although perhaps first applied to the 
present plant, when it was supposed to be a mere variety of 
A tliyrium Fi lix-femina . 
This fern is closely allied to the preceding, indeed, so much 
do they resemble each other, that I have found it next to im- 
possible to fix on satisfactory diagnostics whereby to distinguish 
them. The roots are nearly black, numerous, and often matted 
together ; the rhizoma is very stout, and gradually increases in 
length and becomes branched, as in L. cristata, but perhaps 
rarely to so great an extent, yet I have occasionally seen in 
woods, patches that occupied many square yards, and on dig- 
ging amongst the fronds with a trowel, have found the tufts so 
much connected with each other, as to justify the supposition 
that the whole owed its existence to an original single rhizoma. 
The fronds, on rising from the ground in April and May, present 
a different appearance from those of L. cristata. The margins of 
the pinn 80 are more convolute than in that species, and never 
possess the flattened formation which I have mentioned as cha- 
racteristic of L. cristata. The stem is about equal in length 
to the frond, and nearly erect; it is clothed with blunt or round- 
ed, semitransparent, uniformly coloured scales, so similar to those 
of the preceding species, that 1 cannot distinguish between them. 
One of these scales is represented by the left hand figure at p. 
214. I consider this character alone quite sufficient to separate 
the species from either of those which follow. The frond is 
nearly erect ; more so when growing on marshes and commons 
than when in woods : it is long, narrow — but not so narrow as j 
the preceding, pinnate and linear, the pairs of pinnae from the 1 
first to the eighth inclusive, being generally of uniform length;] 
they are rather distant, and usually ascend at an acute anglel 
from the main stem. The pinnae are pinnate, and the pinnules I 
detached and often distant ; although connected by a slenderJ 
wing, they have a deep notch on each side at the base, a cha-i 
racter very rarely observable in L. cristata. On the first pair ofl 
pinnae the first and second inferior pinnules are of nearly equall 
length, and are nearly twice as long as the corresponding supe-* 
