PREFACE TO THE PRESENT EDITION. 



T HAVE endeavoured in this Edition to briefly cliaracterize and fit into 

 tteir places the new discoveries and the plants found upon fuller 

 information to have been inadequately dealt with in the first. A con- 

 siderable number of new species have been described by F6e and others, 

 which are, in my view, mere forms or synonyms of plants already 

 inserted. It was never intended to make this Synopsis a resumS of 

 synonyms, because fem-sjmonyms are now so many that a mere catalogue 

 of names and references would fill a book far larger than this ; but by 

 far the greater part of the new names not cited here will be found to be 

 dealt with in a paper of mine on Brazilian Ferns in the Proceedings of 

 the Linnean Society, which is not printed yet, but I presume will be early 

 in vol. xiv. 



J. G. BAKER. 



Kew, April 2Sth, 1873. 



