THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 
3 
North Indian ferns in the herbarium of the Royal Gardens, Kew, 
where views were interchanged not only with Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., 
but with Mr. C. B. Clarke, F.R.S., past President- of the Linnean 
Society, and Colonel R. H. Beddome, F.L.S., the author of various 
works on Indian ferns. And, while preparing this paper, I unexpect- 
edly found myself able to leave India and to settle at Kew ; and on 
resuming the study of ferns there — a work which was at first 
much hindered by ill-health — I soon found it advisable to refrain 
from publication until I could again carefully go through the whole 
material, and also that in the herbarium of the British Museum 
and the Wallichian Collection belonging to the Linnean Society, 
at both of which institutions I was made welcome. During this final 
period of study I have had the advantage of free access to Colonel 
Beddome’s valuable collection, and of discussion with him as to critical 
plants common to both Northern and Southern India. 
Following the example set by Mr. C. B. Clarke in his “ Review of 
the Ferns of Northern India, I have not attempted to make 
this paper a complete account of the species enumerated in it. I 
may say, as Mr. Clarke said of his, that my paper is meant to be an 
appendix to Hooker and Baker’s Synopsis Filicum ; but it is also 
an appendix to Mr. Clarke’s “ Review,” so far as the species found west 
of Nepal are concerned, and the remarks on the species are in part 
additions to, and corrective of, those works. They are also, and 
necessarily so, largely corrective of Colonel Beddome’s “ Handbook of 
the Ferns of British India, &c.,” including the Supplement of 1892, so 
far as it deals with the ferns found within my limits, for his de- 
scriptions of them, and remarks, were chiefly taken from the Synopsis 
Filicum and Mr. Clarke’s “ Review.” I have, as a rule, given 
7 i 7 » 
no diagnoses of the species which have already been described in 
those works, but have merely corrected or supplemented them where 
it seemed necessary to do so. I have written full descriptions of the 
new species 1 propose, and also in some cases of the plants I have raised 
from the rank of variety to that of species. 
References are given to three books only, namely, Hooker and 
Baker’s Synopsis Filiqum , Clarke’s “ Review of the Ferns of Northern 
India, &c.,” and Beddome’s “ Handbook of the Ferns of British India, 
* Transactions of the Linnean Society, 2nd Series, Botany, Vol. I (1880). 
