62 Glenniei Baker in Synopsis Filtcum 



it — at altitudes of about 5500 to almost 7000 feet, on (usually) 

 limestone, moss-covered rocks in the forest, generally with a 

 northern aspect.. It spreads itself out like aster, the prolonged 

 fronds bending backward until they hang their tips in the moss, 

 seeking for cracks or crevices, or earth, in which to root. The 

 fronds last for two years at least, living through the w^inter in frost 

 and snow, and through the succeeding dry, hot season, in a shriv- 

 eled and apparently dead state until the rainy season comes in 

 June or July, when they uncurl, and then frequently, if they have 

 not already done so, produce young plants on their tips, or on 

 their pinnae. This is followed by the springing up of fresh fronds 

 from the same roots, which are not generally proliferous in that 

 season, so far as I have seen. Judging from the numerous her- 

 barium specimens I have seen A. fonta)iiiin of the Himalaya has 

 a more erect habit than A. cxiguiun, and is never proliferous. 



The late Mr. H. F. Blanford, F.R.S. {znde his ''List of the 

 Ferns of Simla, in the N. W. Himalaya between Levels of 

 4500 and 10,000 feet," Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 57: 294-315. 

 1888), said that A. exigwim was rare in the neighborhood 

 of Simla. In Mr. J. S. Gamble's collection I have found three 

 sheets — with eleven specimens — from Simla. On the five days' 

 march from Simla to Bagi, eastward on the Great Thibet road in 

 1886, I saw only two or three specimens at about 8000 feet alti- 

 tude, but the fern may be more abundant off the road at lower 

 levels. In 1861 I saw one plant of A, exigiium at Naini Tal, in 

 Kumaun, N. \\^ Himalayas, by the side of the lake, but none any- 

 where else or na the way to Almora, thirty miles northward ; and 

 there is not ntuch record of it from the eastward of Mussooree. 

 There is no passage from A, exigiimn to the next species, A. 

 varians Hk. and Gr. 



Kew, Nov. 1S98. 



