F.L.S., &c. 16mo, pp. 156, with plain woodcuts of
all the species and the principal varieties.
The most important enumerations of the British Ferns
elsewhere to be met with, are those in the recent edition
(6th) of Sir W. J. Hooker’s ^British Flora,’ by Dr. Walker
Arnott, and in Mr. Bahington’s 'Manual of British Botany’
(3rd edit.), in both of which they are treated with deference
to modern views. Ample descriptions of them so far as
then known, are given in Sir J. E. Smith’s 'English Flora,
accompanied by the synonyms of the older writers.
liluch has been achieved towards a thorough knowledge
of the English species, by the scrutiny to which the Ferns
at large have of late years been subjected, both in this
country and in Germany; and we ought not to close this
paragraph without mentioning, of English botanists who
have contributed to this advance, the names of Brown,
Hooker, Wallich, Greville, J. Smith, and Heward, especially,
as having most successfully dealt with a difficult
subject.
THE STRUCTURE OE EERNS.
B ut our young readers will be ready to ask. What is a Fern ?
This we will now endeavour to explain by means of a
familiar comparison.
It is presumed that every reader of this little book, even
the youngest, can recognize a flower, not indeed by the aid
of the somewhat technical intricacies to which the man of
science would resort, but by means of that intuitive perception,
which has grown up with the growing faculties and
acquired strength from the little experiences of childhood
and youth. We will suppose, then, that all our readers are
familiar with natural productions such.as the buttercup, the
poppy, the brier-rose, the daisy, the dandehon, and others
such as these, which are so profusely dispersed over the
meadows and corn-fields, and along the hedge-rows, and by
the way-sides ; even the young ears of corn and the spikes
of meadow grasses must be well-remembered objects. Now,
these all afford examples of flowers, or of masses of flowers.
But then the plants from which the daisy heads and