INTERESTING REMAKES ON BRITISH TERNS. 29 



highly glazed, and somewhat resemble the leaves of the Horn- 

 beam, with the gloss of the Beech. 



The plant is a ready llowercr. Mine is now scarcely six inches 

 high : it showed bloom when less than half its present size, hut 

 as the roots were feeble, the shoot failed, and another was produced. 

 I kept it in the pine-stove, wherein, throughout October and No- 

 vember, the heat during night ranged between 53 and 62 degrees. 

 Late in November, I perceived that several unopened flowers fell 

 off: I therefore removed the plant to a sitting-room. Some blos- 

 soms expanded in the course of a day, and now, exposed as it is 

 to vicissitudes of temperature, — open windows in the morning, 

 confined close air in the evening, &c, — it continues in health and 

 bloom. Thus, this stove plant appears to be semi-hardy ; and 

 being of ready culture, growing well in a mixture of sandy loam 

 two parts, old decayed wood-earth and leaf-soil each one part, it 

 merits general culture and attention. In Loudon's " Hortus 

 Brittanicus" it stands as an under-shrub of the stove, growing two 

 feet high, with yellow flowers : introduced from Brazil in 1825. 



Dec. 1th, 1833. G. I. T. 



ARTICLE III. — Interesting Remarks on British Ferns, 

 No. I. By M. 



This beautiful tribe of plants has until lately obtained but little 

 attention from those who pursue the study of Botany merely as a 

 relaxation, or as imparting additional interest to a residence in 

 the country. One reason has been that the Ferns, as well as the 

 other orders of the Cryptogamous class, present greater difficulties 

 to the botanical student from the nature of their fructification than 

 most other classes ; and another obstacle has arisen from the cir- 

 cumstance, that the terms used in defining the Ferns were so vague 

 .Mid M-ientilic— botanists themselves differed so widely in the names 

 they assigned to them, that how was the student to decide "when 

 doctors disagreed ?" 



Bui the progress made in the science of Botany has extended 

 «\. jiio tin formidable 24th class, cadi order of which has in its 

 turn received elucidation, while microscopic observation has de- 

 tected the mystery of their reproduction. The seed of the Ferns, 



