278 
Bower . — Notes on the Morphology of 
but as regards external contours all of them are distinctly intramarginal. 
Their succession is not alternate, as the specimen represented in ‘ Studies ii, 
Fig. 122, might lead us to expect : the lower spike is slightly to the left, the 
second and third to the right, the fourth and fifth to the left, and sixth to 
the right. This is not according to the rule for pinnae, for they usually 
alternate. The stock of this plant, which was the largest found, was pre- 
served for anatomical study. 
It thus appears that the leaves of the two fertile specimens collected in 
Jamaica fall in generally as regards their external characters with those 
previously compared. 1 There is a reasonable, though not an exact 
numerical parallel between the lobes of the sterile blade and the fertile 
spikes. The insertion of the latter is distinctly within the margin of 
the leaf, as defined by the strongest curvature of the surface, but there is 
no regularity of alternation. In the example here figured there are two 
fertile spikes, right and left, seated as a pair on either side of the median 
line. This is like what is seen in the specimen shown as Fig. 118 in my 
‘ Studies ’, ii, PI. VIII. It is a much less common condition than that where 
the lowest spike is solitary and median in position. 
Numerous other plants of smaller size were found, some of them very 
minute. By carefully rubbing down the decayed humus in which the plant 
was growing, Dr. Lawson was able to collect a considerable number of 
tubers too small to bear leaves. Some of them were attached to roots, and 
it is plain from a comparison of them that the plant is chiefly multiplied by 
buds formed on the roots of older plants, just as in other species of Ophio- 
glossum. Fig. 1, B, shows such a young plant with tuberous stock, bearing 
its first leaf, and still attached to the parent root. 
Anatomy of the Stock and the Leaf-trace. 
The anatomy of the stock of O. palmatum has never yet been de- 
scribed, so far as I am aware. Nevertheless Dr. Chrysler 2 remarks of it 
that ‘as in Ophioderma , the vascular supply of the leaf arises as several 
strands’, and refers to my paper on O. simplex 3 as his authority for the 
statement. But in that paper 4 it is specifically laid down that ‘ the case is 
still open for § Cheiroglossa , in which I am not aware that the stock has been 
examined anatomically ’. And again in the £ Origin of a Land Flora ’, 
which Dr. Chrysler also quotes in his list of literature cited, it is stated on 
p. 462, after a description of the way in which the strands of the leaf-trace 
of Ophioderma are separately inserted upon the vascular system of the 
stock, that ‘ it is still uncertain whether or not § Cheiroglossa shares this 
character \ I am now able to supply some data of the anatomy of the 
1 Studies, ii, pp. 27-32. 
3 Ann. of Bot., 1904, p. 205, 
3 Ann. of Bot,, 1910, p. 10. 
4 p.215. 
