1 82 J 0 U RNA L f BOMBA Y NA TUBA L HIS TORY SOCIETY, Vol. XIV . 
are diplazoid ; and this is evident also on some of Gamble’s specimens and on 
a specimen from Sikkim in Kew, Hook JH. Some of Wallich’s Nepal speci- 
mens differ from the Mussooree plant (and from each other) : others are identical. 
Mr. Baker, at p. 480, Syn. Fil., 2nd. Ed., under A. umbrosum J. Sm., 
says A. (Dipl), Griffithii , No. 245, is perhaps a variety. I think there is not 
the slightest doubt that A , Griffithii , Baker, is identical with A. muliicaudatum , 
Wall. I have not myself gathered A. Griffithii , but there is abundant mate- 
rial in Kew from which a conclusion can be arrived at. On several sheets (ex 
Herb. Hort. Bot., Calc.) of specimens collected by him in the Darjiling Dis- 
trict at low elevations, his Nos. 9006 and .9079, I860, Mr. Clarke has written, 
“ Boot-stock creeping extensively and throwing up solitary fronds : sori few, 
scattered, and few of these diplazoid.” These are exactly the Mussooree plant, 
which is certainly Wallich’s A. muliicaudatum . On one sheet of this series, 
ticketed “ A. Griffithii , Baker, Bishap, 3000', Darjiling, 4-9-69, No. 9006, ” 
and named finally by Mr. Clarke., on 11-1-79, A. m.ulticaudatum 9 Wall., Mr. 
Baker has pencilled “ Madeiran umbrosum. ” He has also pinned on this sheet 
a paper as follows : — “ Clarke, Nov. 1875, seems to distinguish. 
“ 1 Common species is (has ?) Allantodioid sori. 
“ Another sere (series ?) of similar structure, but white and with a scabrous 
stem and rhachis, appears to be A. umbrosum , J. Sm., but very unlike A. australe % 
“ Australe , Brack., from Thwaites — not Bengal, at all. 
‘‘Bengal fern which Dr. King and others call A. australe is forme 
D. Jerdoni, or Griffithii (I think the former). These two have creeping 
rhizomes which send up distant solitary fronds, the stipe rising through the earth.” 
I consider it quite a mistake to put this fern under Athyrium umbrosum , a 
Madeira fern, which is quite different in shape of frond, as well as of sorus 
and involucre— not to speak of rhizome. Specimens of A. umbrosum in 
herbaria are generally incomplete, and the descriptions say nothing as to the 
nature of the caudex ; but in a privately printed account of “ An Easter Holiday 
in Gran Canaria and Madeira”, 1893, written by one whom I know to be a 
keen observer and collector, I find this allusion to the plant— from which I 
gather that it is subarborescent, and must have a stout erect caudex : — “At 
one waterfall ” (in the Levada do furado) “ I noticed Asplemium umbrosum seven 
feet in length and as thick as a miniature tree.” The young plants growing in 
the Kew houses have fronds in tufts, and certainly no creeping sarmentum. A . 
umbrosum has always, I think, an ovate or lanceolate frond : A . multicauda- 
tu'n — a subdeltoid frond, with the lowest pair of pinnae sometimes hardly less 
thin’ the nexo above which are the longest. The involucres of A, umbrosum are 
described by Hooker and Baker as being “ large, tumid, membranous.” Those 
of A. multicaudatwn are very small and narrow, so far as is visible. Heddome 
