_Cheilanthes tomentosa_, Link, “Hort. Berol., ii., p. 42.”—Fil. Hort. Berol., p. 65.—Kunze, in Sill. Journ., July, 1848, p. 87; in Linnæa, xxiii., p. 245.—Gray, Manual, ed. ii., p. 592.—Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 50; Cheilanthes, p. 37.—Eaton, in Chapman’s Flora, p. 590; Ferns of the South-West, p. 314.—Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 140.—Williamson, Ferns of Kentucky, p. 49, t. xi. _Myriopteris tomentosa_, Fée, Gen. Fil., p. 149, t. xii., _A._, f. 2 (a pinnule).—Fournier, Pl. Mex., Crypt., p. 125 (species exclusa). _Notholæna tomentosa_, J. Smith. _Cheilanthes Bradburii_, Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 97, t. cix., _B._—Mettenius, Cheilanthes, p. 37. Hab.—Sandstone rocks along the French Broad River, in North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee, Professor Gray, Mr. Canby, Rev. D. R. Shoop, Professor Bradley, etc. Texas, Lindheimer, No. 743. Mountains of Virginia (?) and Kentucky, according to Gray’s Manual, but Mr. Williamson has hitherto failed to find it in the last named State. The Kew herbarium contains, besides Lindheimer’s plant, a very imperfect specimen marked “Manitou Rocks, 250 miles up the Missouri, Bradbury,” and good specimens from Texas collected by Drummond. Kunze states that it was raised [at the Leipzig garden?] from Mexican spores, and that Rugel collected a few specimens in North Carolina; but Fournier rejects it as a Mexican species. Description:—This is decidedly the largest plant among all our North American species of Cheilanthes, some of the tallest specimens measuring nearly two feet in total length. The root-stock is short, and disposed to branch. It is thickly clad with fine subulate chaff, many of the scales with a dark and rigid midnerve, and others lighter-colored and without midnerve. The plant evidently grows in dense masses. The stalks are clustered, each root-stock sending up a large number of them. They are rigid, wiry, terete and covered with grayish-tawny spreading soft woolly hairs, intermixed with a few which are broader and decidedly paleaceous, especially towards the base. The section is round, and shows a firm exterior sclerenchymatous sheath, within which is a broad circle of brownish parenchyma, and in the middle a single fibro-vascular bundle obtusely triangular in shape, but with the sides slightly hollowed in.