rounded-obovate sessile or adnate-decurrent pinnules on each side, besides a terminal oval pinnule which is twice as large as the lateral ones. These ultimate pinnules are innumerable, and it is in allusion to their very great number in this and the allied species that the generic name Myriopteris was proposed by Fée for the group.

The whole margin of the pinnule is recurved, and from the edge of it is produced a very delicate whitish involucre, the whole forming a sort of pouch, as is admirably represented in the figure given by Fée. The sporangia have a ring of about twenty articulations: Fée says there are vittate or knotted hairs growing among them. The spores are rather large, amber-colored, globose, and delicately trivittate. According to Fée, when placed in water they burst and dissolve into excessively minute sporules.

There can be no doubt that our plant is the Cheilanthes tomentosa of Link. Kunze, who knew Link’s plant perfectly well, referred the North Carolina specimens to it; and Dr. Mettenius, who succeeded to the care of the Leipzig garden, favored me with specimens which are precisely the same thing as the plant here described. But none of the Mexican collectors seem to have found the species, and it may be legitimately queried whether the commonly reported origin of Link’s specimens is the true one. The Cheilanthes tomentosa of the Species Filicum is partly this plant, but mainly the species next to be described.

CHEILANTHES EATONI, Baker.
Eaton’s Lip-Fern.

Cheilanthes Eatoni: Root-stock short, chaffy with rather long slenderly acuminate glossy scales; stalks clustered, four to eight inches long, erect, wiry, covered, as are the rachis and its divisions, with narrow shining pale-ferruginous scales and paleaceous hairs intermixed; fronds four to nine inches long, oblong-lanceolate, pubescent above with whitish entangled woolly hairs, beneath covered with a heavy matted ferruginous tomentum, and more or less scaly, especially when young, tripinnate; pinnæ ovate-oblong, lower ones rather distant, upper ones crowded; ultimate pinnules contiguous, half a line long, rounded, but narrowed at the base, the terminal ones often twice larger and more decidedly obovate; margin of the pinnules continuously recurved, the edge slightly membranaceous.

Cheilanthes Eatoni, Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 140.—Porter & Coulter, Synopsis of the Flora of Colorado, p. 153.—Eaton, Ferns of the South-West, p. 315.

Cheilanthes tomentosa, Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 96 (description and Texas plant), t. cix., A.—Eaton, in Botany of the U. S. and Mexican Boundary Survey, p. 234.

Hab.—Texas and New Mexico, Wright, No. 816; Fendler, No. 1016; Indian Territory, between Fort Cobb and Fort Arbuckle, Palmer; near Cañon City, Colorado, Brandegee; from the Rio Grande westward along the Gila to the Colorado River, Collectors of Mexican Boundary Survey. The kind of place where this fern has been collected is not recorded, but it probably grows in the clefts of rocks along the sides and edges of cañons.

Description:—This fern bears so close a resemblance to Cheilanthes tomentosa, that it is not at all surprising that there has been more or less of confusion between the two. It would seem that when writing his account of the genus Cheilanthes for the Species Filicum, Sir W. J. Hooker had, in his collection, no examples of the North Carolina C. tomentosa, and could identify it only by Link’s rather imperfect description and Kunze’s remarks in Silliman’s Journal. Having Wright’s specimens of the plant here described, and Gordon’s fern from the Rattene Mountains—a plant not yet satisfactorily identified—he referred them to the species named by Link; and then perceiving with his accustomed delicate discrimination that Lindheimer’s and Bradbury’s plant was distinct from Wright’s, he gave the former the name of C. Bradburii. It was not until 1860, when the Ferns for Chapman’s Flora were being prepared, that any one suspected that the C. Bradburii was the true C. tomentosa. In 1866, I had an opportunity of explaining the matter to Mr. Baker, then at work on the Synopsis Filicum, and not long after, I was surprised, and I need not say pleased, by finding that he had given to Hooker’s C. tomentosa the name it now bears.

The root-stock is short, assurgent, and chaffy with rather rigid slender-pointed scales, most of them furnished with a dark midnerve. The stalks are tufted, and are perhaps a little slenderer than those of C. tomentosa. They are chaffy throughout, but more especially at the base, with narrow pale ferruginous scales, intermixed with still slenderer paleaceous hairs. The section is slightly flattened on the anterior side. The exterior sheath is firm; inside of it is brownish parenchyma, and in the middle a semicircular fibro-vascular bundle, the ducts in the centre of it arranged in a figure much like a letter X.

The fronds are considerably smaller than in C. tomentosa. They are similarly oblong-lanceolate and tripinnate, the ultimate pinnules being very numerous and rather more closely crowded than in the other species just referred to. The pubescence is harsher and not so webby on the upper side, and is decidedly heavier and more matted on the under surface. The scales of the branches, or secondary rachises, are broader and shorter than those of the stalk and are very conspicuous in young fronds. In older fronds they fall away, to some extent, and are then less abundant.

The pinnules are rather rounder and less oval than in C. tomentosa, and though they are somewhat purse-shaped, the involucre consists almost entirely of the recurved herbaceous margin, the proper whitish and delicately membranous involucre being nearly suppressed.

The spores are sub-globose, amber-colored, faintly trivittate, and have a finely pustulated or granular surface.

In respect to the narrow herbaceous involucre this fern comes nearest to Cheilanthes lanuginosa, of Nuttall, figured in “Ferns of North America.” It has, however, much larger fronds; and the copious, though narrow scales of the stalk, as well as the scales of the rachises, will readily distinguish it.

It is among the Ferns which have been cultivated by Hon. J. Warren Merrill, though I am not informed what are its special needs in the way of soil, moisture, etc.

MALE FERN.