PREFACE. 
— “laren 
In submitting this volume to the notice of those in- 
terested in the study of Ferns I consider it proper, 
though at the risk of being considered egotistical, to 
give a brief explanation of the circumstances that have 
led to its publication. 
My first introduction to Ferns was in acquiring the 
names of the common British species. In 1823 the 
collection in the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, came 
under my care; it then consisted of about forty hardy 
| species, British and Foreign, and about the same 
_ | number of tender exotics, the latter dispersed in various 
. | hothouses. In 1825 I arranged the tender ones in a 
group at the end of one of the then lean-to houses, 
the space they occupied being 12 feet by 6 feet; 
these formed the nucleus of the present great collec- 
tion. | 
New species were occasionally imported, and others 
= jraised from spores, the spores being obtained from 
E jeollections of dried specimens, chiefly from the West 
. |Indies, Brazil, and Australia, also from a collection of- d 
