state of Nephrodium spinulosum, which he and others have been 
disposed to consider a distinct species (but, in my view of the 
subject, with no more title to distinction than the other forms 
we have particularized), and, as is to be expected in such a case, 
with very different ideas of specific distinctions. I have adopted 
Sir J. Smith’s character, as best showing what he intended by 
the plant. Mr. Moore’s latest definition (Handb. ed. 3) is 
thus expressed: c ‘ Fronds dwarf or dwarfish, oblong-ovate or 
triangular-ovate; stipes, rachides, and veins beneath clothed with 
glands; pinnules convex, oblong; scales broad-lanceolate, usually 
pale, indistinctly two-coloured, fimbriate; sori large, with gland- 
fringed indusia.” I can, indeed, conceive all these characters to 
exist also in Smith’s plant, all showing a tendency to pass into 
other forms of what we venture to consider one and the same 
species. The small size, rarely exceeding a foot in height, in¬ 
cluding the stipes, deltoideo-ovate form, compact habit, scarcely 
more than bipinnate fronds, are perhaps the most leading fea¬ 
tures. Mr. Moore’s plate 25, above quoted, is very character¬ 
istic, and his diagnosis quite accords with the specimen here 
figured. 
Plate 21. Fertile frond of Nephrodium (Lastrea) spinulosum , Sw., var. du- 
metorum,—natural size . Fig. 1. Pinnule with sorus. 3. Scale from the stipes:— 
magnified. 
