TEE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 317 



North Indian ferns in the herbarium of the Royal Gardens, Kew, 

 where views were interchanged not only with Mr. J. G. Baker, F.B.S., 

 but with Mr. C. B. Clarke, F.li.S., past President of the Linnean 

 Society, and Colonel R. H. Beddome, F.L.S., the author of various 

 works on Indian ferns. And, while preparing this paper, I unexpect- 

 edly found myself able to leave India and to settle at Kew ; and on 

 resuming the study of ferns there — a work which was at first 

 much hindered by ill-health — I soon found it advisable to refrain 

 from publication until I could again carefully go through the whole 

 material, and also that in the herbarium of the British Museum 

 and the Wallichian Collection belonging to the Linnean Society, 

 at both of which institutions I was made welcome. During this final 

 period of study I have had the advantage of free access to Colonel 

 Beddome's valuable collection, and of discussion with him as to critical 

 plants common to both Northern and Southern India. 



Following the example set by Mr. C. B. Clarke in his " Review ot 

 the Ferns of Northern India,"* I have not attempted to make 

 this paper a complete account of the species enumerated in it. I 

 may say, as Mr. Clarke said of his, that my paper is meant to be an 

 appendix to Hooker and Baker's Synopsis FiUcum ; but it is also 

 an appendix to Mr. Clarke's " Review," so fiir as the species found west 

 of Nepal are concerned, and the remarks on the species are in part 

 additions to, and corrective of, those works. They are also, and 

 necessarily so, largely corrective of Colonel Beddome's " Handbook of 

 the Ferns of British India, &c.," including the Supplement of 1892, so 

 far as it deals with the ferns found within my limits, for his de- 

 scriptions of them, and remarks, were chiefly taken from the Synopsis 

 Filicum and Mr. Clarke's " Review." I have, as a rule, given 

 no diagnoses of the species which have already been described in 

 those works, but have merely corrected or supplemented them where 

 it seemed necessary to do so. I have written full descriptions of the 

 new species I propose, and also in some cases of the plants I have raised 

 from the rank of variety to that of species. 



References are given to three books only, namely, Hooker and 

 Baker's Sy?iopsis Filicum, Clarke's " Review of the Ferns of Northern 

 India, &c.," and Beddome's " Handbook of the Ferns of British India, 

 * Transactions of the Linnean Society, 2ncl Series, Botany, Vol. I (1880). 



