49 
veins. Side-veins united. Back of frond covered with 
chaffy scales. This genus is remarkable for the side-veins 
not remaining distinct from each other, and for the chaffy 
scales on the back. 
“ Great Dioscorides relates, 
If piuckt in open weather, 
This herb a swollen spleen abates, 
Nay, if for forty days, saith he. 
You drink it steep’d in vinaigre, 
Removes it altogether. 
Ye spiteful souls, its virtues try. 
One thing well nigh I had forgot, 
That when the vinegar you buy. 
In using, make it boiling hot.” 
Quincy, 
Pharmacopsea Officinalis, 
10th Edition, 
MDCCXXXVI. 
Plate I, fig. 16 . 
Scaly Spleenwort. Ceterach though this is 
thickly scattered on almost every old wall in the midland 
and northern parts of the County of Somerset, it by no 
means luxuriates in the district of the Axe. It is rather 
partial to lime stone. The frond is deeply divided, but not 
sufficiently to make distinct leaflets. The divisions or lobes 
are bluntly rounded, and not in the least notched. Many 
fronds arise from the roots, three to five inches long. 
When the first buds begin to appear, they assume a glossy 
white colour. The lower surface is covered with thick 
shining scales. 'No other Pern growing in the neighbour- 
hood in any way resembles it. The scales at first are white, 
afterwards brown, which, when seen under a microscope, 
appear to be beautifully net-worked. The lobes are alter- 
nate, rarely opposite. They turn upward when old, and 
expose their fructification. The fruit only appears when 
the fronds are aged, and then bursts through the scales in 
oblong, transverse masses. It seems questionable w^hether 
there be any real cover to the clusters of spores. Hooker 
says that there is — that Ceterach is now found to possess a 
narrow involucre (cover) like that of Spleenwort (Asple- 
E 
