


















234 THE BRITISH FERNS. 
Arran: Goat Fell. Aberdeenshire: Braemar, A. Tait. Ross-shire: 
Dingwall (sori smaller), Miss Murray. Caithness: Thurso, A. Tait. 
Wicklow: Glen of the Downs, &. Barrington. Kerry: Killarney, 
R. B. The Arran, Devon, and Isle of Man forms have their scales 
somewhat less fimbriated than the others. A small ovate form, 
agreeing with the foregoing in the scales and in the glands, found 
in Glen Croe, Argyleshire, is tripinnate at the base, and has the 
pinnules much smaller than usual. 
3. collina (M.). This is another distinct and permanent variety, 
approaching dumetorum (2) in some respects, but obviously different in 
others. Itis a remarkably neat-looking and elegant plant, of erect 
habit, having sometimes an ovate outline of frond, attenuately 
elongated at the apex, but also occurring of a more elongated, 7. e., 
an oblong-lanceolate or ovate-lanceolate outline. The fronds are 
dark green, one to two feet high, smooth, or sparingly glandular, 
bipinnate. The stipes is variable in length, both in the wild. 
specimens, of which some are found beneath masses of rock, and also 
under cultivation ; it is from one-half to one-third the length of the 
fronds, green above, tinged with dark purple-brown at the base, 
sealy, with entire lanceolate dark-brown scales, which have a con- 
spicuous darker central mark. The scales at the base of the stipes, 
where they are most numerous, are narrow, and have a long 
subulate point; higher up they are scattered, and many of them 
broader and shorter ; and the rachis itself is almost devoid of scales. 
The pinnz, especially the lower ones, are distant and spreading: 
the lowest pair unequally deltoid ; the next pair more elongate and 
less unequal; and the remainder narrower, parallel-sided, rounding 
slightly near the end to an acutish, not at all acuminate, point. 
The pinnules are convex, obtusely oblong-ovate, the basal ones 
narrowed to a broadish stalk-like attachment, the rest sessile and 
more or less decurrent; the larger pinnules are deeply pinnatifid 
with blunt oblong lobes, which are sparingly toothed, the teeth 
coarse acuminately aristate, occurring mostly at the apex. The sori 
are for the most part arranged in two lines along the pinnules, as in 
the smaller forms of the species, and are covered by gland-fringed 
indusia. This variety was first brought into notice by the Rev. G. 
Pinder, to whom we are indebted for specimens, and it is from his 

