149 



reverted to the widow of Linnaeus by whom it was sold to Sir J. 

 E. Smith, for many years president of the Linnaean Society. 

 After Smith's death it was purchased with other collections for 

 the Linnaean Society at a sum that almost paralyzed the society 

 for a quarter of a century. The plants are in an excellent state 

 of preservation and are on sheets about the size of small foolscap 

 paper. The sheets of each genus are protected by heavy wrap- 

 pers which entirely enclose the packets ; the genera are systema- 

 tically arranged in the original cases in which Linnaeus left them, 

 protected by clumsy Swedish locks, and these cases are again 

 placed in others still larger with glass fronts which stand in the 

 assembly room of the Society. 



During the past summer we examined the plants of the genera 

 Osmunda, Acrosticlium, and Poly podium and found the material 

 scrappy, often consisting of mere tips of leaves, rarely with any 

 rootstocks, and often wholly sterile. Only a small part of his 

 species are represented by specimens at all, and those that are 

 often do not correspond with the species described in his works. 

 Two instances will show the nature of the discrepancies : 



Under Osmunda Lunaria ( = Botryclrium Lunaria) the only 

 plant preserved is one of Botrychium matricariae. 



Under Osmunda bipinnata, a West Indian species described 

 from Plumier's plate which represents a very close ally ol Os- 

 munda cinnamomea, the only plant is one of OrnitJwpteris cicu- 

 taria (Kze.), a plant bearing no resemblance to Plumier's plate ! 

 Moore, who made this same discovery, promptly transferred 

 Anemia cicutaria Kze. to Anemia bipinnata (L.) Moore and the 

 name was as promptly adopted in Species Filicum at Kew for this 

 species, a proceeding that cannot hold for manifest reasons. 

 The types of Linnaeus must very largely depend on the plates 

 and descriptions of the early writers from which he quoted. Of 

 these there are twenty-seven works containing descriptions of 

 extra-European ferns from which Linnaeus made citations, to say 

 nothing of thirty-five or more European herbals which were also 

 cited. Considering the number of ferns named by Linnaeus, his 

 original contribution to the knowledge of them was very limited, 

 although he did describe a few species from plants collected by 



