308 . Dnm.PvurrENEY's Hifory and Defcription 
diftinguifh thefe plants, at firft fight, from the-flowering plants 
of this kind. 
Among the writers of our own country, Mr. Ray firft records 
the plant as a variety under Ca/par BAUHINE’s name from the Pinax 
as above quoted; to which he adds, ** Anemones fylveftris fpecies 
c degener effe videtur." Hif. Plant. i. p. 624. Thus ftood the 
matter until the publication of the third edition of Ray’s Synopfs, 
by DiczENrus; when a leaf of this Anemone, laden with thefe tu- 
bercles, which had been found by DILLENIUs, in Bomam T's Hortus 
Siccus, had fo far impofed upon the Profeflor, that he judged it to 
be a new fpecies of Fern *, and introduced it into the Synopfs 
under the name of F7/x lobata globulis dv undique afper/as 
P 125. fab. 3. fig. I. 
Whether Dr. Hitt himfelf deteéted this error of Dillenius I am 
not informed; but as far as 1 know he was the firft who revealed 
it, in his Bri Herbal, publifhed in 1756, p. 12. and this with a 
füppancy of remark every where too confpicuous throughout that 
work, and which, in this inftance, does lefs credit to his own can- 
dour and ingenuoufnefs, than it detracts from the accuracy of Dil- 
lenius, whom he tacitly endeavours to ridicule, under the appear- 
ance of refcuing the memory of Ray from the imputation of this 
error, although he muft have known that no botanift could place 
itto Ray's account. ] make this obfervation, becaufe, in reality, it 
. is as little wonderful that the plant, without the help of glaffes, - 
. fhould, from thefe tubercles, have been miftaken for a Fern, if 
viewed when the Fung: were in their laft period, verging to decay, 
as that, in their younger ftate, they fhould be miftaken for the 
eggs of an infect, Dr. Hill himfelf probably might have feen the 
* Since the above was written I am enabled to add, by information from the prefent 
learned Profeflor of Botany at Oxford, that he has feen among Dillenius’s papers a cor- 
rection of the miftake by Di/niu: himfelf. June 1793. 
i plant 
