208 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol XIV . 
pale ; the narrower scales are also, sometimes at least, bi-coloured. The scales 
of the European plant, whether broad or narrow, are generally pale, self- 
coloured, or if bi-coloured merely with a darker shade towards the centre. 
2. Habit of plants. The European plant has fronds with comparatively 
short stout stipes, thickly clothed with scales all the way up, forming a stout 
compact crown, from which very numerous fronds spread out at a greater or 
less angle from the perpendicular. The Himalayan plants appear to have 
comparatively few fronds, generally with long stipes which quickly taper off 
and are not densely clothed far above their bases ; but sometimes stipes are only 
6 in. long to a frond 22—25 in. long by 9—10 in. broad. Growing on steep 
ground in forest, as they generally do, the fronds of the large plants (or of the 
large broad form), being of lax habit, bend downwards, and are sometimes found 
overhanging and dipping their tips into the rills which run down the rocky 
hill sides. The fronds vary much in size and shape, even in the same station. 
5 ins. to 6 ins. is a common length for the middle pinnae of a frond, and the 
lowest pinnae are often not much reduced ; a lanceolate frond is rare, and then 
the lowest pinnae are not mere auricles. I have the upper three-fourths or so of 
a frond I gathered in the Dehra Dun in 1880 (why now incomplete I cannot 
recollect) which has pinnae fully 9 ins. long, and this portion of the frond 
is 23 ins. long. Eronds from Mussooree, 5-6000 / alt., reach to 34 ins. 
in length by nearly 1 ft. in breadth, unstretched, beside stipes 13 — 15 ins. 
or 4 ft. in total height. But 1 have, also from Mussooree, other fronds of 
mature plants, fertile, with simpler cutting, which are less than 1 ft. high, 
including the stipes, by only S ins, broad. All sizes between these extremes are 
met with. The British plant rarely, I think, has fronds over 6 ins. broad. 
The latest specimen, from Jaunsar, the hill tract of the Dehra Dun district, is 
Gamble’s No. 26616, April 1898 j a frond and incomplete stipe, the frond 38 
in. by 26 in., and part of stipe 21 in., total over 5 ft. high. The pinnules 
have up to ten lobes. The plant is very soft. Dr. Christ says this is var. 
batjaneme of A. aculeatum , Filicine Warburg, Monsunia, Bd. I, p. 77. 
3. Cutting of fronds and pinna* The pinnse are always distant, or dis- 
tinctly separated ; and the pinnules so also, and distinctly stalked. In the 
large, broad, form the pinnse are very acuminate, and even caudate ; but in 
the smaller they taper regularly from base to tip, as in the European plant. 
The pinnules vary in shape from— 1 short ovate-acuminate with a broad auricle 
^ in. long to J in. broad, lobed on the front and toothed on the back,” to— 
“ falcate, f in. long by § in. broad, lobed though unequally on both sides,” and 
to “ narrow, falcate, acuminate, J in, long, by only j| in. broad at base across 
the auricle.” I have never seen the auricle free ; and the longest pinnules 
are seldom cut down nearly to the costa ; whereas the European plant is 
