THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 625 



there was an interval of 2,500 feet between the upper Umit of tliat species 

 and the lower limit of what he called N. remotvm^ and discussed the diflferences 

 between those two ferns, arriving at the conclusion that alt 02 ether they 

 indicated specific distinction. I caiuiot see even the remotest resemblances 

 between them. N. Elanfordii^ though there may be thor.ght to be some 

 similarity in the details of cutting, does not, as a whole, suggest the European 

 plant, the pinnte of v.hich, as its name denotes, increase in distance down- 

 wards until they are three inches apart at the base ; \\hereas in the Himalayan 

 plant the lowest pinnse are not more " remote," and it is smaller than the 

 British plant which, like the Continental European one, is believed to be a 

 hybrid between N. F.-mas. and K. sjnnulosum, Desv. Mr. Barnes, of Beeth- 

 waite Green, Westmoreland, who long ago gave me a frond of K. remotmn 

 from an original plant received from Mr. Clowes, of WindeiTQere, the dis- 

 coverer of the so-called species, told me he beheved it to be the above 

 indicated hybrid, and that he had found that its spores produced typical F.-mas. 

 I demur entirely to Mr. Clarke's statement that the typical plant figured by 

 Hooker, Brit. Ferns, t. 22, is frequent in the West Himalaya, as I cannot 

 find that it at all exists there. When gathering the two plants in the Simla 

 Region I did not at first separate, except by size, K. Elanfordii from 

 N. mmosum, Hope (in Journ. Bof., M'-irch 1896) ; but I afterwards saw that 

 they differed m share and cutting of the fronds. N. Blanfmrlii is near H. 

 F.-mas ; but it has no affinity to N. spinulosvni^ Desv., which has not been 

 got in the Indian Region. In the Journal of Botany, under N. ramosum 

 I said — *' Perhaps the nearest congener of this species is iA^. mmor lis 

 (a slip or misprint for N. nemorale)^ n. sp., Hope MS., a fern with a more 

 limited range, hitherto called N. spinwosum Desv., var. remota ; but that 

 species is never truly bipinnate, and it has always a short stipe and dark- 

 coloured scales," When I thus wrote (m Incha), I was imperfectly informed 

 as to the accepted meaning of the term " bipinnate." Also I have, in 

 pubhshing, altered the specific name of this fern, because "nemorale'' was 

 thought to be too near that of a previously described species : and I can find 

 none more appropriate to it than one that will commemorate the name of 

 the late Mr. H. F. Blanford. 



Subgenus — Eunephrodidm. 

 29. Nephrodium PapiliO, n. sp. — Plants isolated ; cattd. erect : 

 in old plants subarborescent t st. numerous, stout, rising regularly from round the 

 apex of the caudex, very short, ahnost glabrous ; jr. lanceolate, generally suddenly 

 contracted to a long deeply pinnatifid apex or terminal pinna and always 

 prolonged downwards, with shorter and shorter auricled pinnae, nearly to the 

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