ON GENERA AND SPECIES. Oo 



Presl by placing- Matonia in alliance with Ctjatliea, with 

 which in habit and even in technical character no generic 

 affinity is traceable. 



In his general arrang-ement he follows, with a partial 

 exception, the seqnence of Presl, arranging the whole 

 under two sub-orders, GleicJicniacere and Polypodiacea; tlie 

 latter consisting of twelve tribes, beginning- with CyaUica, 

 including- Hymenoijliyllurii, and ending- with AcrosticJiimi, 

 With regard to Asplanium, Folypodhtm, and Aspidium, he, 

 in a great degree, follows Mettenins and Fee's arrange- 

 ment and descriptions oi Acrostichum. 



From what has now been stated it will be seen that, 

 although Sir W. Hooker bestows great praise on his con- 

 temjooraries, he nevertheless adopts but few of their genera, 

 thus making it appear that but little advance has been 

 made in our knowledge of the natural habit and anato- 

 mical structure of Ferns since the time of Sprengel (1827). 

 He, however, finds himself compelled to divide his large 

 genera into sections, which are equivalent to the genera of 

 authors ; indeed, it is only by the sections that wo iwe 

 saved the labour of wading through 200 or 300 species in 

 order to find out a sing-le individual. 



The following- is a tabular view of the sequence of 

 the tribes and g-enera as arranged in the " Species 

 Filicum " : — 



Ordek I.— FILICES. 



Sal-Order I. GLEICHENIACBiE. 



Gen. 2. Platyzoma, Gleichenia. 



Sah-Oi-der II. — Polypodiace/e. 



Trile I.- -Ctathe.e. 

 Gen. 3. Cyathea, Hemitelia, Alsophila. 



