320 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XII. 



Mr. Clarke wrote a diagnosis, which, he said, was "designed to inckide 

 various North Indian ferns diflBcult to separate from the ordinary 

 European N. Fili.v-mas, i.e., the first four varieties following " ; and he 

 then gave nearly as long diagnoses of each of these four, with 

 figures of three of them, and diagnoses of three more varieties, 

 with figures of them. Colonel Beddome gave in his " Handbook " a 

 description of N. Fillx-mas entirely different from that written by 

 Mr. Clarke, and said the plant was found " throughout the Indian 

 reoion, but generally confined to considerable elevations on the 

 mountains" ; and he then gave four varieties, in the first of w^hich — 

 var. 3. pamllelogramma, he combined two of Mr. Clarke's varieties 

 and three other plants which had previously been described as species. 

 Another of these varieties Colonel Beddome gave — N. cochleatum, 

 Don., — Mr. Clarke had given as a distinct species, hesitating to give it 

 feneric rank, though it had previously been made a new genus by two 

 different authors. In his Supplement of 1 892, Beddome says the Euro- 

 pean type of Lastrca Filix-mas does not occur in India! But he 

 repeats the four varieties given in the" Handbook," including L. cocldeata 

 (sp.), Don, and adds six new ones, two of which — Nepkrodium subtrian- 

 gidare and N. assaniense—are sub-tropical, low-level species, which had 

 been described by me in the " Journal of Botany" for November, 1890, 

 and included by Mr. Baker as described new species in his " Summary 

 of New Ferns" published in 1801. Here, then, are in India ten 

 varieties of a fern which itself is said not to occur in India, only two or 

 three of which Colonel Beddome can, I think, have seen growing. 



In other cases authors have not hesitated to place common North- 

 West Indian ferns as mere varieties of species not found at all in 

 North-West India, e.g., Pterls stenophi/lla, Hk. & Gr., Ic. Fil., t. 30, 

 was placed by Hooker, in his Species Filicum, as a mere variety of 

 Fteris cretica, L., and this reduction has been perpetuated by 

 Mr. Baker. But Mr. Clarke in his " Review " altered this reduction, 

 and placed P. slenophylla as a variety of F. pellucida, Presl. ; and 

 Colonel Beddome followed suit. F. pellucida has never been got in 

 North-West India. F. stenopihylla is wholly unlike it, and it is very 

 plentiful in some localities round Mussoorie — exactly Hooker and 

 Greville's plant. After long and intimate acquaintance vith this fern, 

 1 have no hesitation in calling it a species. 



