INTRODUCTION. 



1ERN-CULTURE in America has still the char- 

 acteristics of novelty, although ferns have long 

 been favorites in other lands ; for some of our 

 New-England species have been under cultivation in Old 

 England for two hundred and fifty years. John Trades- 

 cant introduced into Europe, in 1628, the Cystopteris 

 bulbifera and the Maiden-hair (Adiantum pedatum) ; 

 while other species, including the Walking- Leaf Fern 

 (Camptosorus) and the Sensitive Fern (Onoclea), soon 

 followed. In the Kew Gardens at London, about the 

 first of the present century, there were eighty-three spe- 

 cies of exotic ferns under cultivation, while at the same 

 time there were thirty species in the Botanic Garden at 

 Berlin; and in 1866 the collection at Kew numbered 

 more than a thousand species of exotic ferns. Besides 

 the large collections of famous public institutions, there 

 have been and are many private collections of ferns in 



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