ASPIDIUM FELIX MAS.-MALE SHIELD FERN. 
Class XXIV. CRYPTOGAMIA.— Order I. FILICES. 
Natural Order, FILICES . T HE FERN TRIBE. 
Gen. Char. Fructification in roundish points, .scattered, not marginal. Involucre umbilicated, open 
almost on every side. 
Spec. Char. Frond nearly bipinnate. Pinna obtuse, notched. Stipe chaffy. 
This species of Fern is the Oqiwicreplr of Dioscorides ; it is a native of Britain, and is found in great 
abundance about the borders of woods, rivulets, and in stony rocky places, flowering in June and July. 
This species of fern (with others of the same family,) was ranked by Linneeus under the genus Polypodium, 
i or Polypody tribe of plants ; but modern botanists have separated the shield-fern from the Polypody, and 
formed a distinct genus of the shield-fern under the generic title Aspidium.* 
The root is perennial, large, long, firm, and covered with thick brown imbricated scales, and furnished 
with numerous long fibres; the general leaves are pinnate, large, from one to four feet in length, lance - 
shaped, broader in the middle and gradually decreasing to each extremity, terminating above in an acute 
point ; the partial or second leaves are from fifteen to twenty pair, remote on the lower part, gradually 
j approaching nearer as they advance upwards, and running together at the top; the pinnse are from seven 
to fifteen pair, which are largest at the bottom, and gradually decrease towards the top, where they unite in 
I a point, they are of an oval form, and somewhat crenate at the upper extremity ; the seed vessels are 
placed in two rows on the back of the pinnee or lobes, in number from three to six, and covered with a 
pellicle; when the seeds are ripe, the pellicle bursts, and after the discharge of the seeds, the vessels 
I become brown and appear as if covered with dust. 
The Brakes or frondose ferns, Professor Burnett tells us, are not very extensively employed by man, either 
j as food or in medicine. One species only finds a place in our national pharmacopoeias, although several are 
possessed of curative powers, and are esteemed officinal plants in our provinces, and are entered by authority 
in the continental lists of the vegetable materia medica. Even the Aspidium felix mas, the only fern our 
colleges retain, is very rarely used; and yet, from its having been celebrated as an anthelmintic from time 
i immemorial, and more especially from its never having been lauded as a panacea, like many fashionable me- 
dicines, which run their course and are forgotten, but always possessing a certain degree of reputation, it is 
not unreasonable to believe that it deserves it ; and, if so, that it does not merit the neglect that it meets with 
here. The so-called male fern was recommended as a vermifuge by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Galen ; 
and its administration formed the ostensibly specific, if not the most energetic, part of the treatment recom- 
mended by Madame Noufer in cases of tape-worm. But it cannot be overlooked that she accompanied its 
exhibition with a strong dose of calomel, gamboge, and scammony, the very ingredients that formed the 
I famous “ Pulvis Trium Diabolorum,” and which were thought, in their alliance, to be powerful enough to 
discomfit even a more stubborn enemy than teenia. 
The Scythian or Tartarian lamb is a species of Aspidium. Of this fern so many wonderful tales have 
been told, and supported by such evidence, that the world has doubted whether to discredit or believe 
them. Struys, who travelled through Russia, Tartarv, &c., in the middle of the seventeenth century, -gave 
one of the earliest and best accounts of this curious plant, and the following extract is almost a literal 
translation from his work. 
* By mistake Polypodium was put on our drawing, and the error discovered too late to rectify. 
