416 BRITISH FERNS 
It is true that in a general way the finely-cut varieties have a 
greater tendency than others to be proliferous, but it is now known 
that this habit is very general among varieties of angulare, and is 
sometimes seen even in the normal form. “I have generally found," 
writes Mr. Padley, “ that the Ferns having a hard, woody rachis 
are the ones most proliferous, such as acutilobe, multilobe, Zzzeare, 
etc.” Forms of brachiato-cristatum are nearly all proliferous, and 
in some cases not only near the brachiation. Mr. Wills's pulcherri- 
mum and some forms of revolvens are regularly proliferous, and a 
variety of cristatum found by the late Dr. Moore in Ireland has 
often bulbs extending half-way up the frond. 
It is also now known that there are many varieties which in 
every important particular, are identical in character with the 
proliferous forms,—and yet they are not proliferous at all, or very 
slightly зо. 
It would seem, therefore, that the proliferous habit is both too 
general and (even in the class of varieties where it is most common) 
too arbitrary in its appearance, to entitle it to give a name to any 
class of varieties. 
Nor is the name at all descriptive of the very marked character of 
the class to which these, perhaps the most beautiful of all the 
forms of angulare, belong. 
The variations, too, of character among these finely-cut varieties 
are now,—owing to the discoveries of Mr. Padley, Mr. Moly, Mr. 
Wollaston, Mr. Elworthy, Mr. R. Gray, Dr. Allchin, Mr. Wills, 
Mrs. Thompson, and Dadds, Hillman, and Moule,—known to be so 
great that they can no longer be mingled together without con- 
siderable confusion of ideas. Mr. Wollaston was the first to 
meet this difficulty by a subdivision of the class.of finely-cut 
varieties into three classes ; with respect to which he has himself 
supplied the following descriptive notes :— 
““Multilobum, an excess of decompositum,—the whole plant 
being more or less tripinnate, but the division of the pinnules or 
pinnulets more or less abnormally rounded, and in this respect 
differing from the two that follow, which have these portions much 
more асще. 
thought by some that the proliferous character was more or less the habit of 
that class, and that it was confined to it; subsequent discoveries, however, 
proved that in neither respect was this the case ; the name therefore lost much 
of its appropriateness. 



