570 



make this proposition on the only ground which could be taken up, 

 namely, that Bree's name was first in print. He cashiers the name 

 on the inadmissible argument, that, in his individual opinion, Mr. 

 Lowe included two or more distinct species under the one name of 

 foenesecii. Were Mr. Newman's opinion unquestioned and establish- 

 ed, there would still be a breach of botanical usage in re-naming the 

 true typical form of Mr. Lowe's species, which he so carefully points 

 out; though it might afford an ample reason for imposing a different 

 specific name on the other form or forms, erroneously referred to the 

 same species by Mr. Lowe. Of this innovation on botanical usage I 

 will presently speak by illustration, after premising my own more in- 

 dividual objection against the suggestion or practice of Mr. Newman. 



I consider Mr. Lowe to have been correct, not in error, when he 

 included both a triangular and an oblong form of frond under one spe- 

 cific name. I must admit myself to be moving on to hazardous 

 ground, in thus placing a negative against the views entertained by 

 one who has so closely and so successfully studied the ferns of Bri- 

 tain, and their synonymes ; and who has also inspected the very same 

 specimens which have led me to this contradictory conclusion. But 

 facts are stubborn things, and Mr. Newman has made no allusion to 

 the facts which seem to warrant the different conclusion on my part. 

 Among the specimens submitted to Mr. Newman's examination, from 

 my own herbarium, were those collected in the Azores by myself. 

 Of these no mention is made by Mr. N., although they were the spe- 

 cimens which originally showed me the identity of the English and 

 Madeiran species, being intermediate in size and form between Eng- 

 lish specimens, for which I was indebted to Mr. Newman, and 

 Madeiran specimens, given to me by Dr. C. Lemann, who knows 

 perfectly well the species of Mr. Lowe. This idea, once formed, was 

 soon converted into conviction by inspection of the larger series of 

 Madeiran specimens in the herbaria of Sir W. J. Hooker and Dr. C. 

 Lemann, And by a letter recently received from Mr. Webb, whose 

 knowledge of the Atlantic Flora is unequalled, I find that accomplish- 

 ed botanist to have independently arrived at the same conclusion. 



Now, it so happens, that among my half-dozen Azoric specimens, 

 there is one of the oblong form, in which the lower pinnae are neither 

 larger nor more compound than those above them ; and generally, the 

 Azoric specimens have a more elongated frond than those of Britain. 

 Still, that one with the oblong outline, as well as others, possesses the 

 three characters which Mr. Newman emphatically pronounces, in his 

 last article on the Lastra^a foenesecii or recurva, to be those "which 



