214 



my hand to write to you, I cannot resist the inclination I feel to offer 

 you my thanks for your critique on Mr. Andrew Jackson Davis's 

 1 Principles of Nature '* in the June number (Phytol. iii. 149). Judg- 

 ing from the extracts which you have given from that work, and this 

 is all I know about it, 1 cannot for a moment suppose that it ever can 

 become popular among the readers of the ' Phytologist,' or even be 

 perused by them without disgust. However, you have done well in 

 warning botanists against such pernicious absurdities ; and I cannot 

 but applaud you for having on this occasion dropped the editorial we, 

 and for speaking out in propria persona. But now to turn to the fern, 

 which is a more agreeable subject. Are botanists aware of any native 

 habitat of the Polypodium fontanum of Hudson (Asplenium fontanum 

 of Francis) ? or is it not generally believed that this elegant species 

 is no longer to be found wild in Britain, if indeed it ever had a legiti- 

 mate claim to be considered native ? In the first edition of your 

 ' History of British Perns ' you notice the plant, incidentally, as I may 

 say, among your preliminary remarks at p. 4, and give a figure of it 

 at the foot of the page ; but it seems to have been entirely omitted in 

 the second and enlarged edition. On a visit a few weeks ago to 

 Lady Maria Finch, at Boxley Abbey, near Maidstone, I observed in 

 her garden a living plant of P. fontanum : upon asking the gardener, 

 a very intelligent Scotchman, where the fern had been procured, and 

 remarking at the same time, that, of course, it was of foreign, not 

 British origin, he assured me he received it from a friend in Scotland, 

 who had gathered it in a spot where he had himself previously found 

 it in some abundance. I took down from his mouth in pencil the 

 exact locality for the fern ; but regret to say that 1 have accidentally 

 lost the memorandum, and my memory will not serve me to state even 

 the county in which this rarity is still to be found. The present most 

 unsatisfactory notice, however, may serve to put botanists on the look- 

 out, and may prove the means, perhaps, of reinstating a supposed lost 

 species to its rightful place in the list of British ferns. 



W. T. Bree. 



Allesley Rectory, July 6, 1848. 



* I have received a number of letters expressing similar sentiments to those of 

 Mr. Bree, but I am not aware that any others were designed for publication. — E. N. 



