THE FORKED SPLEENWORT 345 
within rocky fissures. It is one of the rarest of our native 
Ferns. 
Description. — It would not he an inapt description to 
liken this little Fern at first sight to a tuft of grass, so 
narrow and thin are its fronds, which grow in pale green- 
coloured tufts from a little rootstock furnished with an 
abundance of very fine fibrous and wiry rootlets. The 
stipes is much longer — often two or three times longer— than 
the leafy portion of the frond, if that may be so called which 
is little more than a narrow leafy blade, or widening out, as 
it almost seems, of the upper part of the stipes, or of the two 
or three branches into which the frond is divided. But 
whether simple or twice or thrice branched, the leafy expan- 
sion seldom exceeds the eighth of an inch in width. Each 
branch is generally cleft or notched into sharp-pointed 
segments, and the veining depends upon the simple or 
branched state of the frond, there being either a simple vein 
which is in some sort a continuation of the stipes or a 
branched vein with a forked venule proceeding through the 
leafy portion of the frond, and entering either its simple apex 
or the divisions into which its apex is cleft. On the under 
side of these blade-like ultimate divisions of the frond, the 
sori or clusters of spore cases are produced in lines along in 
the direction of the vein or veins and attached to them. 
The scale-like indusia are attached to the frond by the 
marginal edges of each division — the free or unattached sides 
of the indusia being towards the mid-veins. As the seed 
clusters develop they throw back the indusia, become 
confluent, and densely cover the whole of the under surface 
of the tiny frond. When the inside margins of the indusia 
are first pushed upwards, and before they are completely 
thrown back, the back of the frond lias the appearance of 
a kind of longitudinal groove or receptacle, opening from 
the centre and exposing its enclosed mass of dark-brown 
