the FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA . 
205 
I hazard the following as a new and complete description of this species 
Plants isolated, or united in tufts. St. densely tufted, forming a thick 
rootstock, thickly covered at base with long linear bright chesnnfc scales 
from 1 and 2 in. 1., gradually succeeded upwards by large broadly-ovate 
acuminate scales, with more or less broad dark-brown centres, the 
scales further up resuming the pale self-colour of those at base, and 
becoming mixed with the pale-coloured long and narrow scales or 
fibrillae which in diminishing size clothe the main and partial rhachises 
and costa. Fr. lanceolate-acuminate, sometimes broadest near base, often 
2 ft. 1., rarely 2| ft., by 3— -9 ins. br. — average breadth perhaps 6 
ins,, always bipinnate ; firm, always broadest at base because 
auricled, very gradually narrowed to the quickly acuminate apex, 
always though shortly stalked, distant at base but becoming crowded and 
imbricated towards apex : pinnl. 12 — 18 pairs, all distinctly stalked except 
near apex of the frond, close and often overlapping each other at base ; 
in simplest form — rhomboidal with a curved apex or ovate-acuminate, 
entire and cut away towards the base on inferior side and always broadl} 
auricled on superior side, sharply and stiffly toothed at apex of pinnule 
and auricle and hardly toothed elsewhere except obscurely on the superior 
side above the auricle, in less simple forms the pinnules prolonged and more 
or less lobed or pinnatifid with sharp stiff teeth on each lobe or segment 
on both sides, the lowest of all pinnatifid and sharply toothed ; up to 
1 1 in. long, and cut down nearly to the rhachis with several (up to five) 
pairs of narrow segments ; all lobes or segments furnished with hard sharp 
mucronate teeth, never merely aristate ; Texture very coriaceous, frond 
heavy ; upper surface glabrous and shiny ; lower — covered on veins with 
small pale-coloured fibrillse and occasional shorter and broader minute 
scales : colour greyish green ; ven. obscure, best seen on underside : 
4— 6 groups on each side of the costa, pinnate or forked in the lobes, 
reaching almost to the margin : sori large, crowded, and ultimately extend- 
ing across several veinlets, absent from centre of pinna?, and apex of 
pinnule, but occasionally found on auricle ; receptacle consisting of 
numerous persistent fibres in a bunch ; involucres large, cucullate, persistent, 
stalked, with dark centres (the sporangia when ripe spreading widely 
beyond the edge), veins of involucres radiating and connected by scalari- 
form veinlets. 
Don’s description, though perhaps fuller and better than those he wrote of 
some other species, seems either to have been thought insufficient or to have 
been disregarded by subsequent authors, which must be my excuse for writing 
a u w one. I will, however, give extracts to show that it does not apply to 
