portant, ahoimdin^r in novelties and ricli in ihc types of Pre.sl, for 

 he published no less than four hundred species of pteridophytes. 



John Smith ( 1 798-1 S88) was the curator of the Kcw Gardens 

 who built uj) the splendid collection of living ferns at that estab- 

 lishment, lie knew ferns in cultivation better than any man 

 before or since his time, and the genera he established were 

 founded largely on habital characters which in great measure 

 were dependent on the fibro-vascular system, whose importance 

 in taxonomy he also clearly recognized. Besides publishing an 

 enumeration of the ferns of the Philippines, Smith early published 

 an outline of his system of fern classification in Hooker s Journal 

 of Botany {z^: 38-70; 147-198. iS42)and afterwards developed 

 it in his later publications (i) Cultivated Ferns (1857), (2) Ferns 

 British and Foreig)i (1866, 2d ed. 1877) and (3) Historia Fili- 

 cuni (1875), in which he also reviewed other systems. 



Smith's collection is at the l^ritish Museum and is interesting 

 as the work of a horticulturist, which like that of a pure morphol- 

 ogist shows underestimation of the value of a herbarium speci- 

 men. As Smith described comparatively few species, his collec- 

 tion contains few types. 



Antoinc Laurent Apollinaire Fee (i 789-1874) was professor 

 at Strasbourg so long as that city formed a part of France. His 

 publications on ferns consist mainly (i) of eleven memoirs on 

 ferns, the first four in folio monographing Antrophynni, Vittaria, 

 and Acrosticlnini ; the others are in quarto form and comprise 

 Genera Filieunt (Memoir 5), descriptions of new species from 

 various parts of the world (memoirs 6, 7, 8, and 10), a list of ferns 

 of Mexico (Memoir 9), and a similar but more pretentious list of 

 the ferns and lycopods of the Antilles (Memoir 11); and (2) 

 Cryptoganies vasenlaires dii Bresil (1869), with Siip/y/enient 

 (1872—73) similarly in quarto and like the memoirs admirabK' 

 illustrated with lithogra[)hic [)lates. These two series contain a 

 total of 285 quarto or folio plates and illustrate about eight hun- 

 dred species of ferns. 



Fee's collection of ferns once belonged to Dom Pedro II of 

 Brazil, and after the death of that unfortunate monarch became 

 the property of M. Cosson in Paris, in whose admirable herbarium 



