146 CERATOPTERIS THALICTROIDES.—THE HORNED FERN, 
transportation to this fairyland,—the student of natural history 
and especially of botany feels equal gratitude for present facilities 
to explore the inmost recesses of its forests; and though it is now 
over three hundred years ago since Captain Jean Ribeau gave 
the account of his “Voyage to Florida,” nearly as many new 
plants are discovered in this long known land as in some of the 
newer territories of the United States. 
The subject of our present sketch is one of these recent dis- 
coveries. Indeed the only published note of its existence that 
we find in American literature as we write is in the “ Catalogue 
of the ‘Davenport Herbarium’ of North American Ferns,” where 
it is recorded as having been obtained from “ Prairie Creek, in 
slow moving water, Southern Florida,” the specimen “gathered 
in July, 1878, and donated by Professor D. C. Eaton.” The 
specimen from which our drawing was made is growing in the 
greenhouse of the Arnold Arboretum, near Boston, under the 
charge of Mr. Jackson Dawson. Ass it has not, therefore, found 
its way into our books of reference, we have had to go to a 
European source for the description already cited, which is of 
the genus. As there is only one known, it does for the specific 
character as well. 
Though a new discovery among the “ Flowers and Ferns of 
the United States,” it has been long known to botanists, having 
been figured by the old English author, Plukenet, before the time 
of Linnzus. Indeed, it is one of the most widely extended of 
all ferns, being found in the warmer parts of all the four quarters 
of our globe. To Linnzus, however, it seems to have been 
known only as a native of Ceylon in the East Indies, and the 
knowledge we have of its world-wide extension shows what great 
progress geographical botany has made. In his time, too, it was 
known as Acrostichum thalictroides, for the natural relationships 
of ferns were not known very well at that time, and it is chiefly 
within the past fifty years that the large fern-genera of the early 
fathers of modern botany have been broken up into sections con- 
venient for more perfect study. Even so late as 1789, when the 
