618 [Proc. B.N.F.C. 



varieties by Mr. Phillips — viz., his Polystichum rotundatum 

 and his setoso cunealum, two of the best things Mr. Phillips has 

 found." 



11 If we look backwards instead of forwards we are confronted 

 with the fact that when Queen Victoria ascended the throne 

 there were apparently no fern lovers at all, and certainly no 

 collections of varieties worthy the name." 



The late Colonel Jones, of Clifton, that facile princeps of 

 fern hunters and raisers, in a paper read before the Bristol 

 Naturalists' Society, 1888, after enumerating the ferns found in 

 the neighbourhood of Bristol and Somerset, says — " It was in 

 the lower parts of the Quantock district that the late Mr. 

 Elworthy, many years ago. made his remarkable finds in 

 Polystichum angulare, which helped to give a greatly increased 

 interest in the study of British ferns, and subsequently Mr. G. 

 Wollaston, Rev. C. Padley, Dr. Wills and Colonel Jones found 

 many fine and distinct varieties in the same district Nor may 

 it be without interest to bear in mind that this is the same 

 district which formed Mr. Elworthy's happy hunting ground, 

 and that Mr. Percival made his remarkable discovery of 

 Devonian corals, not less beautiful than geologically interesting, 

 it would show that the affinity between this part of Somerset 

 and South Devon, where so many of the finer forms of Polys, 

 angidare have been found, is not merely superficial." 



"Nor may it be unworthy of notice that that energetic dis- 

 coverer, Mr. W. H. Phillips, has proved, by his researches) 

 that a certain marked botanical affinity exists between the 

 south-west of England and Ireland, the north especially. 

 There are certain marked forms of Polys, angidare, of which 

 single plants had been found in the West of England, and 

 which, after very exhaustive researches, having never been 

 found in any other part of England, had long been classed among 

 the ferns peculiar to the southwest. Yet, after all this had 

 been comfortably settled, Mr. Phillips turns up with his incon- 

 venient discoveries, and unsettles everything. If there were 

 two ferns which had earned the character of being entirely 



