1024 



Sw. is the plant which Bemhardi seems to have had in view in constituting that ge- 

 nus ; and Presl has not improved the genus by the heterogeneous species he has mix- 

 ed up with it, and which have little in common with the plant in question. So long 

 ago as 1810, Mr. Brown expressed his opinion that Blechnum boreale might perhaps 

 he referred to his Stegania (Lomaria, Willd.) ; and in 1811, Desvaux named it Loma- 

 ria Spicant. Our view of the fructification differs from that of these authors, aud we 

 have not preserved the name of Swartz without stating reasons for it, and giving a fi- 

 gure, which in our mind, at least, confirms those views, (see Brit. Fl. ed. 5, Tab. X. 

 f. 10.) With regard to Mr. Brown's name of Tricliomanes brevisetum, we may here 

 extract what is hut just printed respecting it in the ' Species Filicujn,' p. 126, where 

 the author expresses his regret that he was under the necessity of occupying so much 

 space in his attempt to unravel the difficulties which have always attended the synon- 

 ymy of this plant, and respecting which Sir Jas. E. Smith (whose writings on the 

 Ferns the reviewer, in the ' Fhytologist,' treats with marked contempt), said, nearly 

 thirty years ago, that ' few plants of almost any country have caused more enquiry, or 

 more diversity of opinion, than this Fern.' Unquestionably the T. speciosum of Willd. 

 is the same species as our T. brevisetum, though a native of Teueriffe ; and, as such, 

 the name has the right of priority over that of Mr. Brown ; but after a most careful 

 investigation of other specimens of Trichomanes, and especially the T. radicans of 

 Swartz, from Jamaica, we must declare ourselves at issue with the reviewer in ques- 

 tion, who, notwithstanding that * Mr. J. Smith had labelled a var. of the Irish T. spe- 

 ciosum, lately discovered by Mr. Andrews, as T. radicans, Sw. ; ' nevertheless ' thinks 

 Mr. Newman has exercised a sound discretion in keejjing the name of T. radicans 

 quite out of view.' The author of the ' Species Filicum ' has come to a difi'erent con- 

 clusion, and having satisfied himself of their identity, ventures to retain the name of 

 radicans. It might be supposed that the reviewer was of the same mind when he says, 

 (Phytol. p. 956), ' it was held to be impossible that a tropical plant should exist in 

 Ireland.' He surely does not take Teneriife and Madeira, the recorded habitats of 

 T. speciosum, to be within the tropics. Let it be observed that Mr. Newman gives no 

 authority for the genera Polystichum and Lastrcea in his Synoptical Table of British 

 Ferns, p. 6, but he informs us (p. 8) that these ' have not been employed by any pre- 

 vious writer on the British Ferns.' 



" One word on another remarkable passage of the reviewer, who pronounces Mr. J. 

 Smith's Arrangement of the genera of Ferns as ' perhaps the most profound and use- 

 ful treatise ever presented to the Linneean Society.' Knowing, as the Editor of this 

 Journal does, the character of Mr. J. Smith, and his love of truth, he hesitates not to 

 say that such an overstrained compliment will be far from gratifying to him. Of the 

 merits of his Memoir, the Editor entertains a very high opinion, and of his judgment 

 in discriminating types of genera or subgenera, and it has been held a privilege to af- 

 ford publicity to that very paper in the pages of this work; and further, to give figures 

 of Mr. Smith's new genera (see ' Genera Filicum,^ passim) : but great as is his merit 

 in the 'Arrangement,' now mentioned, it rises much higher in our esteem on account 

 of the candour with which he speaks of his predecessor in the same line ; and it de- 

 tracts nothing from Mr. Smith's merit that Presl was his predecessor in these innova- 

 tions, for the two writers worked wholly independently of eacn other. " I had nearly,'' 

 says Mr. J. Smith, " completed my arrangement, when I received a copy of Presl's 

 ' Tentamen Pteridigraphias,' a work published at Prague in 1836, but not seen by me 

 till 1838. That author's opinions so nearly coincided with mine, that it might seem 



