33G CONCLUSION. 



I must not conclude this work without expressing my most 

 sincere thanks to all who have aided me with their advice 

 and information. In a series of communications, spread over 

 the ten years which have elapsed since the publication of the 

 second edition, it is not improbable that some have escaped 

 notice ; and when this is the case I trust to be forgiven, seeing 

 that my own is the loss. Very many, recording that a frond 

 has been found divided at the apex, or some such deviation 

 from the ordinary mode of growth, I have thought it scarcely 

 consistent with my plan to print. I could wish that fern-ga- 

 therers would give less attention to such deviations, and more 

 to the discovery and discrimination of species. What a field is 

 open for this in Scotland ! The rare and rapid visits of our 

 Wilsons, Watsons, and Backhouses, have made known two 

 Woodsias, a Cystopteris, and two Pseudathyriums : four or five 

 Botrychiums, Onoclea Struthiopteris, Athyrium deltoideum, 

 Lycopodium complanatum, and several other North-European 

 species, will doubtless reward the future exx^lorer. 



The pages of the ' Phytologist ' have frequently been drawn 

 on for the detail of habitats : but want of space has compelled 

 me to be much more sparing in my quotations than I could 

 have wished. As a repository of fern-lore, that journal ap- 

 pears absolutely inexhaustible. 



I may add, that I shall at all times be extremely obliged 

 for specimens of European ferns : we may regard them all 

 as possible, many as probable, inhabitants of Britain ; and a 

 British pteridologist should be perfectly familiar with them. 



