The Structure and Affinities of Macroglossum 
Alidae, Copeland. 
BY 
DOUGLAS HOUGHTON CAMPBELL, 
Leland Stanford Jr . University , California. 
With Plates XLVl-XLVIII and eight Figures in the Text. 
HE discovery of a new generic type in such a group as the Marattiales 
1 is an event of more than ordinary interest. Such a type is the 
recently established genus Macroglossum based upon a remarkable Fern 
sent from Sarawak, in Borneo. 
A recent visit to the East Indies enabled the writer to visit Sarawak, 
and to collect material of this Fern at the original station, near Bam 
Through the kindness of Mr. J. C. Moulton, Director of the Sarawak 
Museum, and Mr. Young, the head of the Gold Mining Works at Bau, the 
writer secured a supply of material, including a number of prothalli and 
young sporophytes as well as specimens of the adult plant. 
The plants were found to be pretty abundant at the place where they 
were first collected, and ranged in size from the original specimen, a 
magnificent plant with fronds nearly four metres in length, to very young 
specimens just emerging from the prothallus. 
Soon after the plant was first collected at Bau, Mr. Moulton found 
it near Mount Penrissen, also in Sarawak. The writer collected a single 
specimen of Macroglossum at the foot of Mount Mattang, about ten miles 
from Kuching, but the sporangia were very young, and it is possible that 
it was not the same species and may have been the same as a plant grown 
in the Botanical Gardens at Buitenzorg in Java under the name Angiopteris 
Smithii. This plant was only about half the size of the Bau specimens, 
and, to judge from the immature sori, they were more like M. Smithii 
and so perhaps identical with it. 
After leaving Sarawak the writer visited Java, and in the Botanical 
Gardens at Buitenzorg a single fruiting specimen of Macroglossum was 
found. The plant had been in the gardens for many years, but its origin 
is unknown. Presumably it had been sent with other plants from Borneo 
by collectors, but there was no record of it, so it is impossible to say 
1 Copeland, E. B. : Ferns of the Asiatic-Malay Region. Philippine Journal of Science, 
Botany, vol. iv, 1909. 
[Annals of Botany, Vol. XXVIII. No. CXII. October, 1914.] 
