134 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
Hooker, Species Filicum, or descriptions of all known Ferns. 
Mr. Pamplin has undertaken the publication, in English, 
of what appears to the Author to have been long a desidera- 
tum in this country, an account of all known Ferns, both 
such as are described in books, and which exist in his own 
extensive collections, systematically arranged. Of the diffi- 
culties attending the satisfactory execution of such a work, 
no one is more conscious than the writer; but the subject 
having for very many years engaged his attention, especially 
while occupied in the publication of the “ Genera Filicum,” 
he does not shrink from the task; and the public will judge 
how far it merits their appelé Hor" The first Part, in 8vo., 
consisting of 64 pages of letter-press, and twenty lithographic 
Plates (two or more subjects being generally represented on a 
Plate), of new or imperfectly known Ferns, and such as are 
not previously figured,—has already appeared. "The gene- 
ral arrangement followed, but with considerable modifica- 
tions, is that of Presl in his Tentamen Pteridographiz,* as 
being the completest and perhaps in most frequent use 
ofany that has yet appeared; but the Author by no means 
assents to the establishment of the numerous Genera con- 
tained in that work, and in the otherwise valuable Synopsis 
of Mr. J. Smith, given in the early volumes of this Journal. 
The introduction of the venation into our systematic charac- 
ters, by no one insisted on with more force and truth than 
by Mr. Brown,t is of the utmost importance in systematic 
arrangement, and constitutes a new era in the study of this 
family of plants; but we are not thence to infer that the 
slightest variation in the direction, or union, or some other 
circumstance in the veins, is therefore to constitute a mark 
of generic distinction. The generic importance of the vena- 
tion is indeed a matter of great difficulty, and I am far from 
having the vanity to suppose that I have hit upon the correct 
* Of which a sketch is given at the close of the ** Genera Filicum.” 
+ See his profound remarks on this : at in Horsfield’s Flora of 
Java, and in Wallich’s work, 
