348 REVIEW. \_November, 



Species Filicum ; being Descriptions of all known Ferns. Illus- 

 trated with Plates. By William Jackson Hooker, K.H., 

 D.C.L. Oxon., F.R.S., F.L.S., etc., and Director of the Royal 

 Gardens of Kew. Parts XI. and XII., or Vol. III., Parts III. 

 and IV. (completing the Third Volume). London: Pampliu. 



The reviewer of the above-named work has simply to announce 

 the publication of the recently issued Parts, and to give a brief 

 outline of their contents. As many of his readers have read and 

 studied the work for themselves, they are better judges of its 

 merits than he is, and can dispense with his opinion. They will 

 doubtless be pleased to hear that Part XIII. will shortly be pub- 

 lished. 



. The recent issue of this valuable work contains the completion 

 of the large genus Asplenium, of which 305 species are here enu- 

 merated and described. The last entered species is A. Ceterach. 

 The learned author advances the following reasons for restoring 

 this British Fern to its ancient place in the great family to which 

 it belongs. 



" This well-known Fern, as a genus, had no resting-place, and now I 

 have ventured to restore to it its old Linnsean name. Most botanists 

 have considered the sori to be destitute of involucre, and I have ranked 

 it among the nudisori. Mr. W. Wilson was the first to direct my atten- 

 tion, in 1828, to the presence of a naiTow involucre of an Asplenium, 

 such as we have figured it in the ' Genera Filicum,' and in the ' British 

 Flora,' and M. Fee has detected and represented a much more distinct in- 

 volucre in the var. aweum." 



It is to be hoped, for the sake of the younger members of the 

 increasing family of botanists, that the plant will be permitted to 

 remain where it has obtained a situation after wandering about so 

 long, and after being alternately admitted and rejected by several 

 more or less numerous and respectable groups of Ferns. The 

 history of its migrations may be safely left in the hands of Mr. 

 Moore, with the remark that the narrative of its travels through 

 the space of ten decades will not be so interesting as the travels 

 of Ulysses. 



The distribution of A. Adiantum-nigrum, viz. a, the common 



