INTRODUCTION 



i. HISTORY OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE FERN 

 FLORA OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY 



OF those that wrote expressly on the Flora of 

 the Presidency, Graham l is the first to give 

 some information on the cryptogamic vegeta- 

 tion. He mentions twenty-five species of ferns 

 with notes as to the places where they had been 

 collected. Dalzell and Gibson 2 did not add 

 anything to the knowledge of the cryptogams. 

 We read in the preface to their ' Bombay 

 Flora ' : * The cryptogamic portion of the 

 catalogue has, in order to meet the present 

 wants of our readers, been literally transcribed 

 from that of Mr. Graham, but we hope, on a 

 future opportunity, to be able to present it to 

 the public in a more compact and enlarged 

 form.' Whether their hope was ever realized 

 we are not able to say ; at least we could not 

 find any further publication on the subject by 



1 J. Graham : Catalogue of the Plants growing in Bombay and 

 its vicinity, 1839. 



9 A. Dalzell and A. Gibson: The Bombay Flora, Bombay 

 1861. 



