iv 



volumes, in which all the known species of typical ferns 

 are fully described, and their synonomy and geographical 

 distribution worked out, with copious illustrations by 

 Mr. Walter Fitch. Of this, the first volume appeared in 

 1846, and the last in 1864. He planned also a condensed 

 hand-book of all the known ferns, to be called Synapsis 

 Filicum, intended specially for the use of colonists and 

 travellers. All the drawings for this had been made, 

 but the letter-press was not far advanced when he died in 

 the autumn of 1865. It was completed by Mr. J. G. 

 Baker, F.R.S., now Keeper of the Herbarium, in 1868, 

 and a second edition was brought out in 1874. Since 

 that date many hundred new species have been dis- 

 covered, and a volume of Hooker's Icones Plantarum, 

 containing plates and descriptions of the more interesting 

 of the novelties, was published in 1887. Mr. Baker ha g 

 also published in the Annals of Botany (1891) a summary 

 of new ferns discovered or described since 1874. The 

 type specimens from which most of the descriptions and 

 plates contained in this series of books have been made 

 are deposited in the Kew Herbarium. 



The living collection in the garden owes its com- 

 pleteness very largely to the zeal and assiduity with 

 which the veteran pteridologist, Mr. John Smith, curator 

 of the Royal Gardens from 1841-63, watched over it for 

 more than 40 years. 



In his privately printed Records of Kew (pp. 322, 323) 

 he gives the following particulars of its origin and de- 

 velopment : — " In the year 1822 I found the collection of 

 ferns at Kew extremely poor, especially as regards tropical 

 species, very many of those introduced in previous years 



