AMESIUM GERMANICUM. 259 



There is a beautiful figure of this fern in Jacquin's ' Miscel- 

 lany' (ii. tab. V. fig. 2, p. 51), accompanied by a description by 

 Wulfen ; those in ' English Botany ' (t. 2258) and Mr. Francis's 

 ' Analysis ' are not so good, and that in Mr. Moore's ' Hand- 

 book ' appears to me to be drawn from the attenuated form of 

 Amesium Ruta-muraria. 



Concerning the name of this fern there appears a variety of 

 opinions. It is the Asplenium germanicum of Weiss, published 

 in his ' Plantse Cryptogamicse ' (299), in 1770, and adopted by 

 Sprengel, Willdenow, Hoffmann, DeCandoUe and Sadler ; so 

 that, besides having the claim of priority, this is the current 

 name on the continent of Europe. It is the Asplenium alter- 

 nifolium of Wulfen, published in Jacquin's ' Miscellany ' in 

 1781, as above cited, and adopted by Roth, Withering, Smith, 

 Hooker, Francis and Babington. I have also been accustomed 

 to regard it as the Asplenium Breynii of Retz (Obs. Bot. fasc. 

 1, p. 32), published subsequently to 1772, and adopted by Weber 

 and Mohr, and Swartz. This synonyme, however, is not so 

 clearly ascertained as the others, and some able pteridologists 

 of the present day beUeve that A. Breynii is another plant. 



The phalanx of botanists who regard germanicum as a spe- 

 cies, must constitute my defence for still retaining it in the list ; 

 at the same time I must, in justice to myself, state that my own 

 judgment would lead to a different conclusion. In the first 

 place, I would remark, that if a good series of fronds be ar- 

 ranged with a view to exhibit the tendency of Ruta-muraria to 

 approach germanicum, it will be impossible to point out where 

 one species ends and the other begins : thus the very frond se- 

 lected by Mr. Moore for illustrating the species, I have no 

 doubt would be called Ruta-muraria by nine botanists out of 

 ten. In the second place, germanicum has always some of the 

 characteristics of a monstrosity ; the interspaces of the pinnules 

 are of varied length, the pinnte also vary in size and figure, in- 

 somuch that on the same root, it is quite uncertain whether the 

 lowest pinna be the largest or the smallest, if the largest, the 

 next frond will probably have it smallest, and vice versa : its 

 figure is equally unstable and eccentric. Lastly, in other ferns, 

 even do-svn to the very exceptional cases of Cystopteris Dickie- 

 ana and Pseudathyrium flexile, both at present confined to one 

 station, we find large and flourishing colonies : now no botanist 



