THE FERNS OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIA . 
293 
to 15, as shown in Abstract I of the List., given above, p. 428. These 
new species are illustrated by 14 Plates, Besides these 15, 8 species 
are given in Abstract. II as new to British India, and 26 species 
are new to the limits with which this work deals. In all 35 Plates 
have been given. 
6- I have adhered to my resolution to give no place in my list to 
so-called varieties, but- — when distinct enough from the so-called types 
to be separately described, -and constant in character— to give them as 
species. I have, however, struck out from the list of species Asylentum 
deniigerum , Wall., and have given it as a “ form ” of A. Filix-femina , 
Bernh. (not T. foemina — as often, and in my Introduction, printed), 
because it varies so much in cutting, (as I came to see) that it is difficult 
to select any specimen of it as a type : all have a strong resemblance to 
A. Filix-femina , though there is a difference from it. Moreover, since 
Clarke and Beddome last wrote, typical A. F-femina has been found, in 
1891 and 1892, growing in several localities in Kashmir ; and speci- 
mens of older date in the Kew and Saharanpur Herbariums have been 
recognised as typical F-femina . But as typical specimens of the species 
have been found distributed, though sparsely, over N.-W. India, in the 
Himalaya, the presence of a form of it in our region is the more easily 
accounted for.' The same change in the position of Nephrodium 
Filix-mas , as a British India fern, has happened. The researches of 
Harris, Trotter, McDonell, MacLeod, and Duthie have shown that the 
type of this species is not uncommon from Baraul eastward to the South- 
West of Kashmir, and that it is to be got in Chamba; v and earlier 
specimens have been recognised as typical, 
7. The figures in Plates XXVII and XXVIII will, I hope, be' 
found to justify me in breaking up the species Aspidium (Polyst.) 
auriculatum into four, — it being so far as is known exinvolucrate, (or 
abinvolucrate) and never found in Northern India, and the other three, 
placed by recent pteridologists as varieties of it, being abundantly dif- 
ferent in cutting and venation. The development of cutting, from that 
shown in fig. 1 of Plate XXVII to that of figs. 3 and 4, is remark- 
able. The broad and deeply cut form I and others had for .years 
sorted into quite a different species, namely, Aspidium ( Polyst. ) 
aeuleatum , Sw. But the venation and clothing on the undersurface of 
the fronds — of very minute seales— seem to leave no doubt on the 
subject. 
