149 



tered through various volumes i){ Ico)ics Plaiitanim,''- which brings 

 the above total of 1074 plates up to over 1200. As the plates 

 of Genera Filicnni and Species Filicuui often contain two or more 

 species, the total number of ferns illustrated from Kcw reaches 

 nearly sixteen hundred species. 



The Kew herbarium of ferns is by far the largest collection in 

 the world and it is no disparagement to the other great collec- 

 tions to say that no extensive critical systematic work, whether 

 dealing with the ferns of any genus or of any country, can be 

 reasonably complete without consultation of this famous collec- 

 tion. Some of our distinguished German friends are respectfull}- 

 urged to take the full import of this statement to heart. There 

 is no excuse for continental botanists longer to neglect this 

 obvious duty. 



The same criticism here made on continental botanists of the 

 present generation could have applied with equal force to Hooker 

 himself. Notwithstanding his wide correspondence with bota- 

 nists of his time, there was obvious failure to examine the t}'pes 

 of his predecessors in fern study, and justice forces us to add an 

 equal failure to recognize as valid too much of the work of many 

 of his contemporaries. Cases are not wanting, even, where errors 

 could have been easily avoided by taking the trouble to consult 

 types no farther removed from Kew than the rooms of the Lin- 

 naean Society in London, and many of the species of Hooker's 

 contemporaries were either discredited without being seen, or 

 entirely passed over in silence. In the cases of Fee, Presl, and 

 Kunze, this was specially pronounced. 



Hooker's work ended in 1865 while he was bringing through 

 the press the hand manual of "all known ferns" under the name 

 of Synopsis Fi/icnni, which was completed and brought through 

 a second edition by his successor in the fern herbarium. In this 

 work the extreme of conservatism is reached and its nearly three 

 thousand species will expand to over four thousand before even 

 the ferns of the great Kew herbarium of that date are fully 

 enumerated, to say nothing of the two thousand that have been 



* Volume 17 of hones riautaruiii, published however subsequently to Hooker's 

 death, was devoted entirely to ferns. 



