NOTE OF THE EDITOR. 383 



may give some notion of the labour yet to come, as well as past, and 

 for which Mr. Moore deserves the thanks of all students and cultivators 

 of Ferns. 



Note of the Editor. 



The Editor of this Journal (or rather the last of a series of Journals) 

 cannot bring it to a close, as he does with this present number, without 

 thanking heartily the many friends, not a few among the most distin- 

 guished of botanists and men of science, for their numerous and valued 

 contributions, continued during a period of thirty years. It is that 

 length of time, namely in 1827, that, indulging in an extensive corre- 

 spondence with botanists and travellers abroad, and possessing in his 

 own, even then, extensive herbarium, many novelties which he could 

 not wish to lie useless, unknown to science and to fame, in the Hortus 

 Siccus, he formed the idea of publishing the "Botanical Miscel- 

 lany ; containing figures and descriptions of suck plants as recommend 

 themselves by their novelty, rarity ', or history, or by the uses to which they 

 are applied in the arts, in medicine, and in domestic economy ; together 

 with botanical notices and information." The work was undertaken 

 by Mr. Murray, and extended to three large octavo volumes, with 153 

 plates, many of them coloured. 



This form, and with such plates, not a few in quarto, was too ex- 

 pensive, both for the publisher and the author; and in 1834 Messrs. 

 Longman engaged to publish a continuation, in an altered (smaller and 

 cheaper) form, under the slightly modified title of " The Journal of 

 Botany, being a second series of the Botanical Miscellany," etc. 



After the appearance of vol. i. of this Journal, with thirty plates, it 

 seemed more eligible to the Editor that he should undertake to con- 

 duct the botanical portion of 'Taylor's Annals of Natural History,' 

 which he did for two years. But he considered the mixing up botany 

 with zoology objectionable, requiring, as it did, that the botanist should 

 purchase the zoology of the % Annals,' and vice versa; so that he again 

 reverted to the " Journal of Botany," and carried out three more 

 volumes, with thirty-seven plates, entirely however at his own cost ; so 

 that it may be supposed his expenses were heavy, while his profits were, 

 as before and since, as he always anticipated, literally nil. 



An opportunity however occurred, in the year 1838, of carrying on 



