1888.] H. F. Blanford— J[ List of tie Ferns of Simla. 295 



fiora of this neighbourhood was far richer in individuals and, to some 

 extent probably, in species than it now is. In 1877 and 1882, in the 

 coarse of a very superficial search, I obtained two or three species which 

 I have since hunted for in vain ; and, in a list of ferns collected between 

 1875 and 1877, drawn up by one who appears to have been a careful and 

 competent collector, and published anonymously in the latter year, twenty- 

 two other species and varieties are enumerated which 1 have not met with. 

 Some few of these are doubtless from either lower or higher levels than 

 those here adopted as limits, and one or two may be erroneous determi- 

 nations, but it is very likely that several have since been extirpated. 



The 1877 list enumerates 86 species and varieties ; my own, not 

 less than 101, and it therefore includes 37 which are not in the former ; 

 but 20 of these were not then described, or at all events had not been 

 identified as Indian ferns, and some of them may possibly have been 

 included under other and erroneous names. And five of my own list I 

 consider as doubtfully distinct. It contains, therefore, but 12 distinct 

 forms, well known as Indian in 1877, \^hich escaped the former collector. 

 The names in the 1877 list which do not appear in mine, omitting 

 those which have been changed, or which I have rejected, are the 

 following : — 



Trichomanes auriculatum. 



Cystopteris fragilis (a high level form) . 



Cheilanthes rufa (a low level fern). 



Tier is longipin7iula. 



Asplenium heterocarpwm. 



A. tenuifolium. 



A. Hohenackerianum. 



A. oxyphyllum. 



Nephrodium gracilescens. 



N. thelypteris. 



N. cochleatum (a low level fern), 



N, BrunonianuTn (a high level fern). 



N, harhigerwn (ditto). 



N. spars'Uin. 



N. setigerum (a low level fern). 



Poly podium appendiculatum. 



P. punctatum. 



P. adnascens (possibly P.Jissum). 



P. Memiontideum, 



P. propinquum (perhaps P. rivale), 



P. juglandifoUuui. 



Gymnograimne tolla. 



