THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA. 
9 
west to east of Nepal, a country of many hundreds of miles in length 
that has not been open to explorers for the last 70 years or so, but 
it leaves in doubt in what part of Garhwal — -a tract extending from the 
Tons to the Ramganga— the plant has been gathered. Especially in 
Ahe cases of new species, or species new to India, or to the limits dealt 
with in this paper, does it seem proper to give full authority for state- 
ments as to habitat. Colonel Reddome, in the Supplement to his u Hand- 
book,” enters Cystopteris viontana , Link., as a species new to India ; but 
ho gives (i Cashmir ” as the habitat, and does not give the name of the 
person who found it there. Until Recently, when I found in the Kew 
Herbarium a specimen of this fern collected in Kashmir in 1877 by the 
late Dr. Aitchison, I was unaware of the authority for this habitat, and 
before I read of it I had believed that the plant had not been found in 
Asia, except in Kamschatka, until 1884, when it was found in Kumaun, 
in the North-West Himalaya, at an altitude of 12,000 to 13,000 feet, 
b}' Mr. Duthie. Other stations for the plant were discovered by 
Mr. Duthie over the west border of Nepal in 1886 ; but he never 
found it in Kashmir. So far as I know, no one besides Dr. Aitchison and 
Mr. Duthie has ever found this plant between the Carpathians in Europe 
and the extreme west of Asia. In the case of another entry in Beddome’s 
Supplement — Asplenium germanicum , Weiss — said to have been got 
in Kashmir, and therefore to be new to the Indian region— 
the collector’s name ought to have been stated. Mr. J. C. McDonell did 
find a scrap of this species in Kashmir early in 1891 ; but he did not 
know he had got it until sometime after Colonel Beddome’s Supplement 
had been published. As will be seen, recorded in the proper place, 
A . germanicum had been got previously in Afghanistan and Chamba. 
For reasons which will be obvious, when it is considered that this 
paper is being published in instalments, all the new species are given 
first, as Part IT. ; and Plates of all of them will b8 issued along with 
the descriptions, or thereafter, as may be found possible. Not being 
a draughtsman, I am at a disadvantage in attempting to give illustra- 
tions ; but Mr. N. E. Brown, the well-known botanist has carried out 
my ideas and wishes very correctly as well as* artistically. The 
details and enlargements and arrangement of the plates are entirely 
Mr. Brown’s ; but as he could not spare time for making the finished 
drawings of fronds, these have been done, from hlS sketches and the 
