4 Conclusion

From a survey of spectra of 82 Bn and An stars (33 Bn stars and 49 An stars) we have detected seven new H$_\alpha$ emission-line stars. Detection of these seven new Be stars will be useful to compute the frequency distribution of Be stars among the main-sequence B and A stars of the BSC. Among these seven Be stars, two have been detected as IRAS sources (HR 1544 and HR 4552). Three of these seven stars may be possible Be-shell stars (HR 1544, HR 2191 and HR 4552).

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the referee, Myron Smith, for valuable comments and suggestions that helped to improve this paper. Sincere thanks to K. Kuppuswamy, C. Velu and A. Muniandi for their help and assistance during the observations. KMVA thanks the Indian National Science Academy for a Fellowship. He also thanks Professor Patel of the University of Bombay for his interest in the work. Part of this work was carried out while K.K. Ghosh held a National Research Council-(NASA/Marshall Space Flight

Center) Research Associateship. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France.