THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 321 



The theory underlying all this restriction or reduction of speciea 

 seems to be that recently observed plants, however apparently 

 distinct, are likely to be mere varieties of previously kno\^Tl and 

 described species. But a variety must surely be a variation proved to 

 have originated from a known plant, and not merely a different plant 

 which botanists think resembles a well-known plant, and, from dislike 

 to increase the number of species, choose to call a mere variety of it. 



I am well aware that there are hundreds of cultural varieties of 

 ferns — European chiefly — and that these, having been propao-ated 

 from plants found wild, retain their characters permanently when 

 cultivated, or diverge even further from the type. But such 

 varieties are for the most part sports, or monsters in appearance, and 

 no one thinks of setting them up as species ; and botanists do not even 

 enumerate them under the species from which they are known or are 

 supposed to have originated. Fern-fanciers, on the other hand, would 

 probably cease to take an interest in them if they were recognised by 

 botanists as species. Such sports are rarely found in India, and when 

 met with are treated as sports not named as varieties. The so-called 

 varieties of Indian ferns are serious entities, with no eccentricities of 

 form or habit, and, were it not for slight or fancied resemblances in 

 them to previously described species, there seem to be no good reasons 

 why they also should not be favoured with full descriptions and specific 

 names. Differences of mode of growth and venation are surely good 

 specific distinctions ; and yet we find plants so differing grouped under 

 the same specific name, and one called a variety of the other on merely 

 fanciful grounds. There is sometimes doubt as to the separate entity of 

 species described in the books, because the nature of the rhizome has 

 not been observed and described. For this collectors are of course 

 partly to blame ; but in many cases authors are silent as to the rhizome, 

 and seem to think it a feature of no importance. An isolated i)lant with 

 a woody root-stock, perhaps nearly as thick as one's wrist, of slow and 

 almost secular grovv'th, and which is erect, or merely decumbent, and 

 throws up fronds from the apes in a tuft, and, if decumbent, 

 dies off behind, while it continues to grow slowly forwards, is of a 

 totally different nature from a fern vvhich has a thin, perhaps succulent 

 quickly growing and widely-creeping and branching rhizome or aar- 

 mentum^ which throws up fronds singly at greater or less intervals 



