BOTANICAL NEWS. 367 
plied the largest number of these varieties. Excluding synonyms, Mr, 
Fraser gives the names of 338 recorded varieties for each of the two 
first-named species, and 293 for the last. Does not the Darwinian see 
in this the indication that the Britain of future ages will in its Fern- 
flora far-outstrip our present impoverished period, having it increased 
some 300-fold? And then the varieties! Our nurseryman may 
mourn that he has been born in these degenerate days. A few species 
persistently refuse to produce any form differing from that to which 
the specific name was originally applied. They object to take advan- 
tage of the benefits which “natural selection ” gives them, very much 
to the annoyance of Fern cultivators. These refractory conservative 
species are—Asplenium septentrionale, Cystopteris montana, Gymno- 
gramme leptophylla, Lastrea Thelypteris, Polypodium Dryopteris, and 
the species of Hymenophyllum and Woodsia 
BOTANICAL NEWS. 
G y bas lost another of her ablest men of science, in Dr. D fs ee du 
Schl] Sow Professor of Botany at Halle, who died on the 12th October last. 
The Rev. W. A. Leighton has bc. vul issue the thirteenth Fasciculus of 
his * Lichenes Britannici Exsiccati. 
The Rev. M. 2 Berkeley has received specimens of Agaricus collinus, Scop., 
from Durham,—a species not hitherto noticed in Britain. 
We have received notice of the death of William Tyrer Gerrard, of Natal, 
whose botanical discoveries are frequently alluded to by Harvey and Sonder in 
their ‘Flora Capensis.’ He has added several new genera, and upwards of one 
hundred and fifty new species to the Natal flora, several of which deservedly 
bear his name. ` Gerrard left Natal in April, 1865, and arrived in Madagascar 
he fell a poe to pestilential marsh fev The death of s so S oiai and 
indefatigable a naturalist, far away foi friends and home, is with much 
sincerity deplored by a numerous circle of friends to whom he had endeared 
himself. 
Among the recent changes introduced into the High School of icem 
it was resolved to give a series of instructions on the natural sciences. Mr. J 
Sadler, Botanical Demonstrator in the University of Edinburgh, recently a 
livered the first lecture of a course on botany, to o a large a showing a 
lively interest, on the part of the scholars, in the subject. This is in the 
right. n, by one of the first scholastic institutions in Betli, and will 
