THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 417 



to 15, as shown in Abstract I of the List, given above, p. 428. These 

 new species are illustrated by 14 Plates. Besides these 15, 8 species 

 are given in Abstract II as new to British India, and 26 species 

 are new to the limits with which this work deals. In all o5 Plates 

 have been given. 



6. I have adhered to my resolution to give no place iu my list to 

 so-called varieties, but — when distinct enough from the so-called types 

 to be separately described, and constant in character — to give them as 

 species. I have, however, struck out from the list of species Asplenium 

 deniigerwn, Wall., and have given it as a " form " of A. Filix-femhia, 

 Bernh. (not F. foemina — as often, and in my Introduction, printed), 

 because it varies so much in cutting, (as I came to see) that it is difficult 

 to select any specimen of it as a type : all have a strong resemblance to 

 A. Filix-femina, though there is a difference from it. Moreover, since 

 Clarke and Beddome last wrote, typical A. F.-femina has been found, in 

 1891 and 1892, growing in several localities in Kashmir ; and speci- 

 mens of older date in the Kew and Saharanpur Herbariums have been 

 recognised as typical F.-femina. But as typical specimens of the species 

 have been found distributed, though sparsely, over N.-W. India, in the 

 Himalaya, the presence of a form of it in our region is the more easily 

 accounted for. The same change in the position of Nephrodium 

 Filix-mas, as a British India fern, has happened. The researches of 

 Harris, Trotter, McDonell, MacLeod, and Duthie have shown that the 

 type of this species is not uncommon from Baraul eastward to the South- 

 West of Kashmir, and that it is to be got in Chamba ; and earlier 

 specimens have been recognised as typical. 



7. The figures in Plates XXVII and XXVIII will, I hope, be 

 found to justify me in breaking up the species Aspidium (Polyst.) 

 auriculatum into four, — it being so far as is known exinvolucrate, (or 

 abinvolucrate) and never found in Northern India, and the other three, 

 placed by recent pteridologists as varieties of it, being abundantly dif- 

 ferent in cutting snd venation. The devolopment of cutting, from that 

 shown in fig. 1 of Plate XXVII to that of figs. 3 and 4, is remark- 

 able. The broad and deeply cut form I and others had for years 

 sorted into quite a different species, namely, Aspidium (Polyst.) 

 aculeatum, Sw. But the venation and clothing on the under surface of 

 the fronds — of very minute scales — seem to leave no doubt on the. 

 subject. 



