more or less the habit of that class, and that it was con- 

 fined to it, subsequent discoveries however proved that in 

 neither respect was this the case, the name therefore lost 

 much of its appropriateness. 



It is true that in a general way the finely-cut varieties 

 have a greater tendency than others to be proliferous, but 

 it is now known that this habit is very general among 

 varieties of angulare, and is sometimes seen even in the 

 normal form. " I have generally found," writes Tvlr. 

 Padley, "that the ferns having a hard woody rachis, are 

 the ones most proliferous, such as acutilobe, multilobe, 

 lineare, etc." Forms of brachiato-cristatum are nearly 

 all proliferous, and in some cases not only near the 

 brachiation. Mr. Wills' '' pulcherrimum " and some 

 forms of " revolvens " are regularly proliferous, and a 

 variety of cristatum found by the late Dr. Moore in Ireland 

 has often bulbs extending half-way up the frond. 



It is also now known that there are many varieties 

 which in every important particular are identical in 

 character with the proliferous forms, — and yet they are 

 not proliferous at all, or very slightly so. 



It would seem therefore that the proliferous habit is 

 both too general and (even in the class of varieties when 

 it is most common), too arbitrary in its appearance, to 

 entitle it to give a name to any class of varieties. 



Nor is the name at all descriptive of the very marked 

 character of the class to which these — perhaps the most 

 beautiful of all the forms of angulare, belong. 



The variations too of character among these finely-cut 

 varieties is now— owing to the discoveries of Mr. Padley, 

 Mr. Moly, Mr. WoUaston, Mr. Slworthy, Mr. R. Gray, 

 Dr. Allchin, Mr. Wills, Mrs. Thompson, and Dadds, 

 Hillman, and Moule — known to be so great that they can 

 no longer be mingled together without considerable con- 

 fusion of ideas. ]\Ir. WoUaston was the first to meet this 

 difficulty by a sub-division of the class of finely-cut 



