WHERE TO FIND FERNS. 



II. DEFINITIONS OF TERMS. 



O render unnecessary the repetition 

 of explanations of the meaning 

 of the botanical terms used in 

 the description of the parts of 

 ferns, the definition of such terms 

 as are used in this volume will be 

 here given. The list will be 

 as short as possible, because 

 generally the simplest and least 

 technical expressions will be used, 

 and botanical terms will only be 

 resorted to when they indicate 

 what could only otherwise be 

 conveyed by several words. By 

 reading this short chapter once 

 or twice the uninitiated will, therefore, be readily able 

 to understand all that is said in the succeeding chapters, 

 and will not find themselves involved as they would 

 were nothing but technical terms employed in the 

 mazes of a new language. 



Ferns, as most of our readers will scarcely need to 

 be reminded, are flowerless plants, allied to funguses, 

 lichens, liverworts, mosses, and seaweeds, but standing 

 higher than those orders in the scale of vegetation. 

 Their more immediate allies are plants of the following 

 orders : Equisetacece (Horsetails) ; Lycopodiacece (Club- 

 mosses) and Marsileacece (Pepperworts). All these 

 plants belong to the large class designated, in the 

 botanical arrangement of the vegetable kingdom, 

 Cryptogamia so designated because the fructification, 

 produced without the agency of flowers, is more or less 

 concealed by being borne on the backs or edges of their 

 leafy parts. 



