XIV PREFACE. 



him to form a more exact judgment on this head than was 

 then in his power." Increased study has, he must confess, 

 strengthened his conviction that those Botanists, who have 

 showed themselves peculiarly addicted to multiplying 

 genera, have not always taken Nature for their guide, nor 

 succeeded in eliciting a simple and tangible arrangement. 

 Yet have their close and accurate investigations thrown a 

 new light upon the study of Ferns, a light which cannot 

 fail to aid the researches of future writers, and which 

 ought, therefore, to be gratefully acknowledged. In these 

 remarks, Dr. Presl and Mr. John Smith are particularly 

 alluded to. Dr. Presl was the first, at least in point of 

 publication, to carry out the vast extension of the Genera, 

 and his is the completest Catalogue that has yet appeared. 

 In the following pages, a middle course has been pursued, 

 between the highly multiplied genera of these two authors, 

 and the too meagre enumerations of Willdenow, Sprengel, 

 Link, Kunze, and others. 



The author cannot conclude these observations without 

 the expression of a most earnest wish, that our illustrious 

 countiyman, whose name stands in the Dedication of this 

 work, had pursued to the fullest extent, those views, relat- 

 ing to the genera of Ferns, which have been, as far as they 

 go, admirably detailed in the ' Plantee Javanica3 Rariores,' 

 p. 2, &c., and the ' Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae.' 



