THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA 
135 
MacLeod's from Kashmir, at an altitude of 1500': one I have is' 12 inches 
high ; and I noted, when going over his collection, another plant which had 16 
fronds covering, as dried, an area of 15 by 10 inches. Major MacLeod noted 
that the size of the frond is reduced at high elevations, e.g., on Kuchil Peak, 
12 , 000 , alt., to only 3 inches. Two specimens from Kagan Valley, in Hazara, 
collected by Trotter, are 3 and 9 hi. high, respectively ; and from Chamba 1 have 
plants 3 in. and 7 in. There is never any resemblance or passage to the ne\t 
species. The Indian specimens agree with the description of A. fontanum 
Bernh. in the Sgn. Fit. in that they are all distinctly bipinnate : A. exiguwn is 
never more than bipinnatifid. A. fontanum is always of a pale grass-green 
colour : almost yellowish sometimes : A. exiguum is dark green. And, corre- 
sponding to the cutting and venation, the -position of the sori in the two plants is 
quite different. In A. fontanum the sori arc all placed in the pinnules and 
segments, on the veinlets, without any relation to the costa of the pinna : in A. 
exiguwn they are in a row on each side of and close to the costa. A. fontamm, 
so far as I know, never has fronds with the rhachis prolonged and rooting at the 
point ; nor have I ever seen it proliferous on the -pinna). Both these features 
are characteristic of A. exiguwn t. 
There is a wide hiatus in the record of distribution cf A, fontanum lietWeen 
Chamba and the Ganges Valley in Tehri Garhwal (broken only by Mr. Lace's 
gathering in Bisahir), the intervening ground, except near Simla, not having 
much searched for ferns. Blanford does not record it from the Simla Region ; 
nor is it in Mr. Bliss's collection. In Kumaun A. fontanum is got at from 
10,000 to 12,000 feet above the sea, and thus, apparently, the farther south the 
fern goes the higher the minimum altitude to which it descends. It ought, 
therefore, to be got at high altitudes in the Punjab Hill States, eastward of 
Chamba, and in Tehri and British Garhwal. A great deal of the European 
material, called A. Halim , Willd. (under Aspidium), which by some botanists 
is reduced to A. fontanum^ is more like A. exiguwn than like A. fontanum ; but 
the fronds of A. Halleri are broader for their length, and the sori do not lie 
along the costa or secondary rhachis. Willd. said of A. Halim— ab. A. 
fontano abiinde distincta species 
14. A. exiguum, Bedd., Ferns of Southern India, p. 49, tt. 140. 
Asplenium fontanum , Bernh., var 3 . exiguum , Bedd. H. B. 158. A. fontanum, 
Bernh. C. R. 484. A . Glemiei, Baker, Syn. Fil. (2nd Ed., p. 488.) Athyrium 
gracile , Fournier, Plant. Hex., p. 102 . 
Though Colonel Beddome, in his Handbook of 1883, dropped this fern as a 
species, I am obliged to revive it, because I cannot clearly separate from it a com- 
paratively common North-West Himalaya fern. A. Gknniei , Baker, which is 
