I860.] REVIEWS. 253 



11. B. anomalum. This is what is called an amorphous form 

 of the plant. The normal examples, and most of the varieties, 

 have fronds of two kinds or shapes ; the sterile ones being gene- 

 rally shorter and narrower than the fertile fronds. In this amor- 

 phous (we wish the discoverer had described it as monomorphous, 

 fronds uniform ; ' amorphous ' means without form, shapeless, or 

 unsymmetrical) variety the barren and fertile fronds are uni- 

 form, of the same shape. 



12. B. anomalum minor : (mmw* is the proper form of the word.) 

 For the 'rest of these varieties, want of room compels us to refer 

 those who are interested in such objects, to Mr. Stansfield's paper, 

 which contains in all twenty-two varieties, many of which were 

 previously nondescripts. 



Ferns : their Structure, Propagation, Development, Culture, Geo- 

 graphical Distribution, Uses, Classification, and Diseases, 

 By William Kamsay M'Nab, A. B.S.Ed., Librarian and Cu- 

 rator of the Herbarium of the Fleming Society of Natural 

 Science (Nov. Coll.), Edinburgh. [Read before the Society, 

 and reprinted from the ' Scottish Gardener,' for private cir- 

 culation.l 



Our readers are presented with an extract, from the above, on 

 Fern diseases, a subject generally omitted by authors. 



" Ferns," says Mr. M'Nab, " like all other things, are subject to their 

 troubles and diseases. But the greatest evil under which they rest is the 

 risk of beinff^ eaten up. Snails are very fond of indulging themselves in a 

 desert of young fern-fronds, and their ravages are sometimes terrible. 

 But the grubs of a beetle, Otiorhyncus sulcatus, threaten to be one of the 

 greatest pterophagi which ever visited the collection of Perns. I have 

 succeeded in observing two diseases and several results of injury caused 

 to Ferns. One is where the frond when young has been shot, or else nib- 

 bled by a rabbit. This I have found in a wood near Lasswade ; while I got 

 two fronds, which had been eaten by snails, in the Botanic Garden, among 

 a number of Lastrea MUx-mas. . . . There are, as far as I have observed, 

 two Fungi which infest Ferns : the one is Uredo filicmus, — the other I 

 have not been able to get the name of. The Uredo infests the fronds of 

 Ferns, and is of a reddish tinge. The specimen I have is on the Poly- 

 podium Dryopteris ; the other is on the stem of Pteris aquilina, and is of 

 a blackish tinge." 



