234 
ASPIDIACEiE. 
Irish counties with the same feeling of certainty ; and it was 
only in deference to the judgment of three distinguished bota- 
nists, the late Professor Don, Mr. Moore of Dublin, and Mr. 
Babington of Cambridge, that I at last abandoned my opinion, 
and consented to give the species as a variety of dilatata. Pro- 
fessor Don, although he had frequent opportunities of consulting 
my somewhat ample materials on the subject, never in any de- 
gree wavered from his first opinion ; and Mr. Moore and Mr. 
Babington, who have enjoyed the best possible opportunities of 
forming an accurate decision, having seen it growing in all states 
and in an infinite variety of stations, still consider it a mere form 
of Last, dilatata. The testimony of Sir W. Hooker I have al- 
ready adduced. In adding another species to our list of British 
ferns, I think it but a matter of justice to my readers to show 
that I stand opposed to four of our most distinguished botanists. 
On the other hand, it is no little consolation that I am able to 
announce the judgment of Messrs. Bree, Borrer and Jenner, as 
corresponding with my own. 
The fronds, on first rising from the earth, are regularly con- 
volute, and when they exhibit the first symptoms of unfolding, 
the two lower pinnae are very conspicuous, and their superior 
size is still more manifest than at a later period. When the 
frond is entirely unfolded, it is of an elongate triangular form, 
of a very gracefully curved habit, and about equal in length 
to the stem, which is clothed with narrow, elongate, laciniated, 
toothed, brown, concolorous scales, which, in luxuriant plants, 
are frequently so numerous and so divided as to give the stem a 
woolly appearance : one of these scales is shown in the right-hand 
figure at page 214. The stem itself is dark purple in colour, 
and very hard and woody in texture. The frond is pinnate, and, 
as in Poly podium Pryopteris, P. calcar eum, Cystopteris mon- 
tana, and all truly deltoid ferns, the lower pinnae are vastly 
superior to the rest in size, and very distinctly stalked. The 
pinnae are pinnate, the pinnules pinnate, and the lobes again 
divided and serrated, and all the serratures terminate in short 
spines. The inferior pinnules are generally larger than the su- 
perior, and the first inferior pinnule of the lower pair of pinnae 
is vastly superior to all the rest in magnitude. The calour of 
