A Summary of the new Ferns which have 
been discovered or described since 1874. 
BY 
J. G. BAKER, F.R.S. 
Keeper of the Herbarium 3 Royal Gardens , Kew. 
With Plate XIV, 
HE second edition of Hooker and Baker’s Synopsis 
-A- Filicum (now out of print) brings the enumeration of 
genera and species up to the year 1874. Since that date 
a large number of novelties have been discovered and described 
and so much fresh light has been thrown by morphological 
investigation on the taxonomic relations of the different groups 
of plants included under FlLICES that it is time for a new 
handbook. As there is not any chance of this being produced 
at present, I propose in this paper to attempt a general sum- 
mary of what has been added to our knowledge in respect to 
species during the last sixteen years. I do not intend to describe 
again the plants that have been described already ; but merely 
to indicate their position in the sequence followed in the 
Synopsis , in the same way as in the supplement published in 
the second edition. Most of the larger collections that have 
been received at Kew have been already published in Britten’s 
Journal of Botany and in the Transactions and Journal of the 
Linnean Society, but a considerable number of new species 
which have been received from time to time are still unnoticed. 
Of many of the plants which have been described by other 
authors we possess authentic specimens. Some of these I can 
only place as synonyms, and others, measured by the standard of 
[Annals of Botany. Vol, V. No. XVIII. April, 1891. ] 
