INTRODUCTORY. 



Most colonists have greater or less acquaintance with our New Zealand ferns, 

 and very many cultivate some, or try to do so, for the sake of their bright fresh green 

 colours, but comparatively few have, or apparently care to have, a really intelligent 

 knowledge of them, because they cannot classify them, and are frightened by the 

 botanical names assigned to them, and the Latin or Latinised Greek terms in which 

 the descriptions are given in scientific text-books. I have often heard persons say, 

 "Why not give English names to plants?" The answer is easy. If Englishmen 

 want English names, the inhabitants of all other countries will want names in their 

 own languages too ; and who could identify a plant called by a score or more names 

 In different places, and know that it was the same one in all cases ? This difficulty 

 is at once avoided by giving the plant a scientific name (usually more or less descrip- 

 tive) in a tongue which is not now spoken in any country, and yet is understood 

 by educated people of all races. As it is, the ferns have local names in Europe, for 

 instance, "Lady Fern," "Male Fern," "Royal Fern," "Shieid Fern," "Oak Fern," 

 "Parsley Fern," "Bracken," &c., in England, and the same plants are known by 

 other names on the Continent ; but what Englishman knows the German or Russian 

 names, and what German or Russ knows the English ones ? Many New Zealand 

 ferns have Maori names, but how few even of colonists know them, and what a 

 muddle a large proportion of those few make of pronouncing them ! English names 

 have, however, been given to some by settlers. The objeft of the following pages is 

 to supply, in popular form, intelligible to the ordinary run of readers, such information 

 respecting the New Zealand ferns as may enable them to be readily identified and 

 classified, and thus add much to the interest taken in them by their admirers. I feel 

 sure that almost everyone who gathers a fern, merely on account of its attractive form 

 or colour, would like to know what it is, and that such knowledge would increase the 

 number of fern gatherers, by all those who at present negleft the plants merely be- 

 cause they cannot name them, and are unwilling to look foolish through not being 

 able to do so. 



Descriptions of the colonial ferns, often illustrated by drawings, occur in the 

 writings of the naturalists who accompanied the early exploring expeditions that visited 

 New Zealand, and the whole of these, up to 1853, were embodied in Dr. Hooker's 

 " Flora Novoe Zelandiae," published under the authority of the Colonial Government. 

 Even this, however, is now out of print ; and the straitened state of the colonial 

 finances has, thus far, prevented the issue of a second edition revised and completed 

 to the present time. The high price of the book limited its sale, and the scientific 

 terms in which the descriptions are given precluded its becoming popular, highly 

 valuable as it is as a work of reference. It contains some errors, such as classing 

 separately what are only widely-differing forms of the same plant ; and failing, in other 

 cases, to discriminate between plants which nearly resemble each other in appearence, 



