6 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol.XII . 
Mr. Clarke wrote a diagnosis, which, he said, was ‘‘designed to include 
various North Indian ferns difficult to separate from the ordinary 
European N, Filix-mas , i.e ., the first four varieties following ” ; and he 
then gave nearly as long diagnoses of each of these four, with 
figures of three of them, and diagnoses of three more varieties, 
with figures of them. Colonel Beddome gave in his “ Handbook ” a 
description of N. Filix-mas entirely different from that written by 
Mr. Clarke, and said the plant was found “ throughout the Indian 
region, but generally confined to considerable elevations on the 
mountains and he then gave four varieties, in the first of which— 
var. 3 . par allelogr amma, he combined two of Mr. Clarke’s varieties 
and three other plants which had previously been described as species. 
Another of these varieties Colonel Beddome gave— A. cochleatum , 
Don., — Mr. Clarke had given as a distinct species, hesitating to give it 
generic rank, though it had previously been made a new genus by two 
different authors. In his Supplement of 1 892, Beddome says the Euro- 
pean type of Lastrea Filix-mas does not occur in India ! But he 
repeats the four varieties given in the “ Handbook,” including A. cochleata 
(sp.), Don, and adds six new ones, two of which — JSfephrodium subtrian - 
gulare and N. assamense — are sub-tropical, low-level species, which had 
been described by me in the “ Journal of Botany” for November, 1890, 
and included by Mr. Baker as described new species in his “ Summary 
of New Ferns ” published in 1891. Here, then, are in India ten 
varieties of a fern which itself is said not to occur in India, only two or 
three of which Colonel Beddome can, I think, have seen growing. 
In other cases authors have not hesitated to place common North- 
West Indian ferns as mere varieties of species not found at all in 
North-West India, e.g Pterls stenophylla , Hk. & Gr., Ic. Fil., t. 30, 
was placed by Hooker, in his Species Filicum i as a mere variety of 
Pteris cretica , L., and this reduction has been perpetuated by 
Mr. Baker. But Mr. Clarke in his “Keview ” altered this reduction, 
and placed P. stenophylla as a variety of P. pellucida , Presl. ; and 
Colonel Beddome followed suit. P. pellucida has never been got in 
North-West India. P. stenophylla is wholly unlike it, and it is very 
plentiful in some localities round Mussoorie — exactly Hooker and 
Greville’s plant. After long and intimate acquaintance with this fern, 
I have no hesitation in calling it a species. 
