42 
THE FERNS OF SOUTH AFRICA 
will ever be found in Cape Colony, but the whole region north 
of the Orange, Vaal, and Umfolozi Rivers is still, botanically, 
almost a terra incognita , and doubtless contains many still 
unrecorded species.” 
The twenty-two years which have elapsed since then have 
seen a complete transformation of the means of transport, as 
also of the safety and comfort with which the northern regions 
up to and beyond the Zambesi may be toured and their floras 
studied, and the above prediction has been found correct 
throughout. Many collectors have been at work in the Orange 
Free State, Transvaal and Rhodesia, and their collections 
have been rich in ferns ; in Namaqualand and Damaraland, 
Dr H. H. W. Pearson and Dr Marloth have proved that ferns 
are by no means absent, and in Zululatid and Portuguese 
East Africa I have explored most of the lower levels, while 
Mr C. F. M. Swynnerton, F.L.S., has collected in the dividing 
range between Portuguese East Africa and Rhodesia, and his 
fern collections have been reported on by Mr A. Gepp, F.L.S., 
of the British Museum Herbarium, in the Linnean Society's 
Journal , Botany, Oct. 1911, where localities are given for 66 
species of ferns and fern allies, and his specimens have since 
been examined by me and used herein. 
The result of all these collections (which have mostly 
passed through my hands) is that the number of South 
African species has been very considerably increased and 
the known distribution of nearly every species much ex- 
tended, the only exceptions to this being the few absolutely 
local species. 
At the Johannesburg meeting of the British Association, 
Aug. 1905, I submitted a paper entitled “ Recent Information 
concerning South African Ferns and their Distribution,” which 
was published by the South African Philosophical Society 
(Vol. XVI. Part 3, Aug. 1906), in which the number of species 
of ferns and fern allies is brought up to 212 — South Africa 
being there taken to include Southern Rhodesia and part of 
Portuguese East Africa, viz. all the sub-continent south of the 
Zambesi, which also is the area adopted in the present work. 
About the same time Mr F. Eyles published a list of the 
