THE FERNS OF NORTH- WESTERN INDIA. 
57 
species of his own making, some of which, I have good reason to believe, is 
only N. an dum, Baker (q. v.). The only resemblance it has to JV. mode, 
Desv., of which Beddome says it is a variety, is in cutting and venation ; in 
every other character it is different. It is a very handsome plant, with fronds 
rising in a ring round the apex of the subarborescent eaudex, forming an 
inverted hollow cone like that produced in Stnithwpteris german tea. iV. mode 
does not grow so regularly. Other distinguishing characters arc — the thin 
papyraceous texture ; the almost glabrous surfaces ; the prolongation of the frond 
down the shaft below the lance-head, so to speak ; in short, broadened and 
auricled pinna;, in almost exactly opposite pairs, which irresistibly suggest butter- 
flies head downwards — the main rhachis representing the body ; and, linally 
the fugacious or inconspicuous involucres. 1 have seen this fern in cultivation 
in the irrigated garden at “ Douglas Dale,” below Naim Tal, and consider it 
a strikingly beautiful plant. It seems to requi wet, or occasionally flooded, 
ground for its full development, and coiuequently the eaudex and sripes are 
naked, or nearly so. Mr. Levinge noted, regarding the specimens he collected 
below Darjeeling, and which he incorrectly named N % tnmeatum , Presl., that rhe 
plant grows 6 — 8 ft. high. Mr. Duthie and I got it mom than 5 ft. high in a 
swampy patch in forest near Mussooree in 1882 ; but I could never find the 
spot again. N. mode is one of the commonest ferns in the Dehra Dun, and 
the outer N.-W. Himalaya at low levels, and it, too, likes water ; but it is 
never glabrous, and never has the buttcrfly-auricied pinnae extending down the 
shaft of the lance. 
Colonel Beddome, in his Supplement of 1892, says— “ Mr. Hope consider 
this a well-marked fern, and says that it is subarborescent, and of a brilliant 
green colour ” (I don’t recollect giving it the latter-mcntioned character) ; 
“his specimens have quite an erect eaudex ; Mr. Wall’s Ceylon specimens 
however, have a decidedly creeping root” ‘‘it is a most 
marked fern when fully auricled nearly down io the base of the stipe, but I find 
this is not always constant, as I have specimens which nm mode rather close.” 
I have since seen the Ceylon specimens Colonel Beddome referred to — two 
fronds with creeping rhizomes : the fronds are similar, though they have only 
5 pairs of auricled pinna 1 ; hut the creeping rhizome I consider quite enough to 
separate them, not cnly from N. Fapilio, but also from N. mode. Thwaites’e 
and Wall’s specimens iu Kew, cited above, have not a scrap of rhizome : other- 
wise they are N Fapdio. 
80. Nephrodium occultum, n. sp .—Cana, (or Rhz.) not seen ; 
si. 141 — 36 in. (incomplete) in length, slightly palaceous at base, as shown by 
scars of fallen scales ; /a— -of small specimen 19$ in. 1 ., 10 in. br. ; of larger 
