PREFACE 
IX 
expense ; to the Superintendents General of Education for 
Cape Province and for Natal, who have assisted by placing 
orders ; and to Senator the Hon. Marshall Campbell and 
others, through whose assistance the financial arrangements 
have been completed. 
In 1892 I closed the preface to the first edition with the 
words “ I do not anticipate that many more species of Ferns 
will ever be found in Cape Colony, but the whole region 
north of the Orange, Vaal, and Umvolosi Rivers is still, 
botanically, almost a terra incognita , and doubtless contains 
many still unrecorded species.” 
Such has proved to be the case. The northern colonies 
have proved much richer in ferns than the previous lists in- 
dicated; the coast colonies remain nearly as they were. But 
the northern Drakensberg ranges, the Portuguese mountain 
slopes, and the Zambesian valleys are even now far from closely 
investigated, and I still expect more species to be found in 
these localities and probably also on the west coast. The 
present edition enumerates 220 species as compared with 179 
species in the first edition. 
T. R. S. 
Maritzburg, 
Natal. 
26 November , 1914. 
