THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 323 



west to east of Nepal, a country of many hundreds of miles in length 

 that has not been open to explorers for the last 70 years or so, but 

 it leaves in doubt in what part of Garhwal — a tract extending from the 

 Tons to the Ramganga — the plant has been gathered. Especially in 

 the cases of new species, or species new to India, or to the limits dealt 

 with in this paper, does it seem proper to give full authority for state- 

 ments as to habitat. Colonel Beddome, in the Supplement to his " Hand- 

 book," enters Ci/stopterh viontana. Link., as a species new to India ; but 

 he gives " Cashmir " as the habitat, and does not give the name of the 

 person who found it there. Until recently, when I found in the Kew 

 Herbarium a specimen of this fern collected in Kashmir in 1877 bv the 

 late Dr. Aitchison, I was unaware of the authority for this habitat, and 

 before I read of it I had believed that the plant had not been found in 

 Asia, except in Kamschatka, until 1884, when it was found in Kumaun, 

 in the North-West Himalaya, at an altitude of 12,000 to 13,000 feet, 

 by Mr. Duthie. Other stations for the plant were discovered by 

 Mr. Duthie over the west border of Nepal in 1886 ; but he never 

 found it in Kashmir. So far as I know, no one besides Dr. Aitchison and 

 ]\Ir. Duthie has ever found this plant between the Carpathians in Europe 

 and the extreme west of Asia. In the case of another entry in Beddome's 

 Supplement — Asplenium germanicum, Weiss — said to have been got 

 in Kashmir, and therefore to be new to the Indian region — 

 the collector's name ought to have been stated. Mr. J. C. McDonell did 

 find a scrap of this species in Kashmir early in 1891; but he did not 

 know he had got it until sometime after Colonel Beddome's Supplement 

 had been published. As will be seen, recorded in the proper place, 

 A. germanicum had been got previously in Afghanistan and Chamba. 



For reasons which will be obvious, when it is considered that this 

 paper is being published in instalments, all the new species are given 

 first, as Part 1 1. ; and Plates of all of them will be issued along with 

 the descriptions, or thereafter, as may be found possible. Not being 

 a draughtsman, I am at a disadvantage in attempting to give illustra- 

 tions ; but Mr. N. E. Brown, the well-known botanist, has carried out 

 my ideas and wishes very correctly as well as artistically. The 

 details and enlargements and arrangement of the Plates are entirely 

 J\[r. Brown's ; but as he could not spare time for making the finished 

 drawings of fronds, these have been dor.e, from his sketches and the 



