AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 
and Ireland have been produced, bei 
adverted to in another page, it is unnecessary 
here to allude to them, further than to point out the fidelity with which the outline 
of the specimens is reproduced; and also how admirably the peculiarities of the 
vascular structure—which is of real importance in the classification of this family 
—aro represented by Nature-printing, The process itself has been described by 
Mr. Henry Bradbury in 
There is, however, one feature of the accompanying text, on which some explanation may be 
lecture delivered before the Royal Institution. 
desirable, in order ti 
its obj 
id intention шау not be misapprehended, Tt has been attempted to 
record, and to give some account of the multitudinons vari 
ions of the comparatively few species of 
Ferns inhabitin: 
these islands, which, even in so limited a geographical area as that of Great Britain 
and Ireland, have been met with by diligent explorers within the very few years which have elapsed 
since the love of Ferns has become so widely diffused as it now is. It will be apparent, from the 
subordinate position assigned to them, that no botanical importance is claimed for most of the forms 
thus enumerated ; but the object of recording them has been two-fold 
In the first place they have been specially noticed for the purpose of affording aid to those Fe 
admirers, including not a few of the gentler sex and of high estate, who derive such agreeable recreation 
as that afforded by Natural History studies, in seeking and finding, in collecting, and in cultivati 
the species of Ferns, prolifie of varied forms, and which for the most part have to be sought amidst 
P р 
enchanting rural scenery, where both mind and body derive benefit from the pursuit, Such 
students of Nature have a right to whatever assistance they may draw from records like the present 
and it is for their special behoof that the varieties we have had occasion to notice have been mentioned 
under distinctive 
We believe, however 
at the long series of variations enumerated, have a bo 
ical significance 
and it is this, in the second place, which has led us to notice them with some particularity. They are 
not indeed, in many instances, objects which the general bo 
anist can attempt to keep separate under 
disti 
¡ct names even as varieties ; those only which are most prominently placed having this importance 
claimed for them, But they are undoubtedly links in the chain of evidence which may direct him to the 
conclusion that species have a wider range of form, even within narrow geographical limits, than many 
nists are willin 
to admit, They may also teach him that the va 
ions of different plants of 
admitted specific rank, often serve to connect the individuals into a series so extended, that spec 
themselves thus become things of doubtful import, and of uncertain limit. "his lesson, again surely 
leads to the conclusion that species are mere groups of individuals associated by the Naturalist for his 
own convenience and that of others, just as genera are groups of the so 
called species collected to 
with the same end in view. ‘The fact that such closely allied series of forms which would ordin; 
be referrible to several species admitted to be distinct but which for this very reason cannot be 
absolutely defined, and the total failure of all attemp 
to explain practically what a speci int 
forcibly, if no bly, to the conclusion that Nature acknowl mly individuals, and that 
а species is а thing of man’s contrivance, and hence has only an artificial value 
Apart from this consideration, another obtrudes itself. Admitting the existence of species, whether 
