WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER. 329 



lately, and some of them to the last), were mainly restricted 

 to his old favorites, the Ferns. Some years before he re- 

 moved to Kew, he found the veteran Francis Bauer, then an 

 octogenarian, or near it, employed in drawing under the 

 microscope admirable and faithful illustrations of the fructi- 

 fication of Ferns. He arranged immediately for their publi- 

 cation, drew up the letter-press, and so brought out, between 

 1838 and 1842, the well-known work entitled, " Genera Fili- 

 cum, or illustrations of the Ferns and other allied genera." 

 His large quarto, " Filices Exotica?, in colored figures and 

 descriptions of exotic Ferns, chiefly of such as are cultivated 

 in the Royal Gardens of Kew," (100 plates,) appeared in 

 1859 ; — the drawings of these, as of nearly all his illustrated 

 works for the last thirty years, by Walter Fitch, his indefati- 

 gable coadjutor, whom he had trained in Scotland, and who 

 soon became " the most distinguished botanical artist in Eu- 

 rope." " A Second Century of Ferns " (imp. 8vo) was pub- 

 lished in 1860 and 1861, the First Century being the tenth 

 and closing volume of the " Icones Plantarum." 



But the principal systematic work of these later years was 

 his " Species Filicum, being descriptions of the known Ferns, 

 . . . accompanied with numerous figures," in five volumes, 

 8vo. The first volume of this work appeared in 1846, and 

 the last only a year and a half ago. 



The crowd of new Ferns and the new knowledge which has 

 accumulated in the interval of seventeen or eighteen years, 

 demanded large revision and augmentation of the earlier vol- 

 umes to bring them up to the level of the later ones. More- 

 over, a compendious work on this favorite class of plants was 

 much needed. Both objects might be well accomplished by 

 a synopsis of known Ferns in a single volume, to be for our 

 day what Swartz's " Synopsis Filicum " was just sixty years 

 ago. To this Sir William Hooker, upon the verge of four- 

 score, undauntedly turned, as soon as the last sheets of the 

 " Species Filicum " passed from his hands, devoting to it 

 the time that remained after attending to his administrative 

 duties. Upon it he steadily labored, with unabated zeal and 

 with powers almost unimpaired, conscientiously diligent and 



