60 BURMA, ITS PEOPLE AXB PRODLTTIOXS. 



— tluit section to wliicli the original simple detinitiou was found to bo most applicable, 

 or which included plants that came nearest in character to the one to which the 

 name was tirst applied. Hence, e.g. Wallich's Poh/podiiim giganteiun. would become 

 Hooker's Ahoplula gigantea, and so on. And hence, inevitably, Synonymy. And, 

 as in nature, animal or vegetable, those species are accounted to be the highest and 

 the most perfect, which have the greatest ditferentiation of parts, i.e. separate organs 

 for separate uses (a bird, for instance, to possess a higher organism than a snail) ; so, 

 in Botany, an increased, and presumably appropriate, terminology, as it is the con- 

 sequence of a larger discrimination, or differentiation of species, argues an advance 

 and not a deterioration in that iScience. 



And, for the inordinate multiplication of names for one species, however undesi- 

 rable, the thing has been unavoidable — it was not planned, but it grow : — it is not 

 an " opprobrium," but an accident. One person finds a fern in one place, say Burma; 

 a second finds one in another place, say China ; and a third in a third, say Now 

 Caledonia ; and so on ; but not one of the three knows for certain whether it be new 

 or not; so each gives it a name, according to his fancy or his judgment. In course 

 of time all these several plants fiml their way to Kew, with many others collected 

 by different persons all the world over ; and, when they come to be collated and 

 compared, they are all found to be one and the same, and perhaps not new either, 

 but to have had a name given it long ago, possibly even by Linna?us himself ! Some 

 who have given a new name may even have been authors of note, but their names 

 must give place to the oldest. Thus, for example again (I invent the names), Pteris 

 elegans of one, may be Pt. repens of another, and Pt. bifurcata of a third, and so on, 

 and the clearing up of all this dilHculty, and the unravelling of all this entanglement 

 (which may have been growing for years), may well afford Sir Wm. Hooker matter 

 for " a dozen lines of large type," with, possibly " twelve dozen more of small typo 

 in an exposition of the synonyms." Nor, as a fact, is the fern in question, Pteris 

 quadriawita, always so "easily recognized" as Dr. Mason says. It is a wide-spread 

 and Protean fern, "varying much in size of frond, number of pinnte, and in the 

 nature of the apex of these pinna;.'' A great part of the twelve dozen lines is 

 taken np with the elucidation of these differences. True, there may be some who 

 think all this to be waste of time, men even of a practical and legal turn of mind, — 

 for, " de minimis non curat lex," — but there are many who think differently, and 

 are pei'suaded that, as in the operations of nature, a minute, and, if you like, con- 

 temptible milk'pore, by the persevering continuance of its obscure work, has built 

 up habitable islands without numljer, and barrier reefs hundreds of miles long ; so, 

 in the study of nature, the power of patient persevering attention to, and investi- 

 gation of small things, has resulted in making science what it is, and in building 

 up the fame of a Hooker or a Darwin. 



Ferns hold the first rank among Cry[itogamous plants, i.e. plants whose organs 

 of reproduction, though existent, are hidden from view. They arc flowerless plants. 

 They are also called Acrogen-t, because they grow from the point, or terminal axis 

 only. They are, further, remarkable for their vernation, or manner in which they 

 are folded before expansion, which is called eireinnate, or, familiarly, rolleil up like 

 a watch spring. The elegant crozier-like terminations of the undeveloped fronds 

 must have been remarked by all who have observed the growth of ferns. These 

 unroll themselves just as a watch-spring would be unrolled if an attempt were 

 mado to expand it. Nothing can well be imagined more graceful than the form 

 of a tree-fern when its fully developed di'ooping fionds are seen surmounted by 

 a crown of the undeveloped eireinnate ones. 



A fern either grows on an erect eaiide.v (stem or trunk), which may be only 

 a few inches high, or many feet and tree-like, in which case the fronds are tiiftetl, 

 growing all round a common central axis ; or, it developes a slender elongated 

 horizontal axis, called (as in a similar growth of orchids) the rliitoma, or root-stock, 

 from which the fronds issue at varying distances. The frond, which, strictly 

 speaking, is the leafy portion of the plant only (though it may be sometimes used 

 more generally for that and its support too), is raised on a longer or shorter stalk, 

 which is the stipes. The larger, or primary, divisions of the frond are called 



