INTRODUCTORY. 



the fern-allies ; and as regards the second objection, it would be almost impossible to 

 give intelligible descriptions in non-scientific language, without greatly increasing 

 their length and complexity ; as one immense advantage of a scientific nomenclature 

 is its conciseness. I believe, however, that the main reason why this and the hand- 

 books have not hit the popular taste has been that a written description of a plant 

 can hardly render it capable of identification by a non-scientific reader, unless it is 

 illustrated by a drawing. In fact, I believe most people would identify by a drawing 

 alone far more readily than by any mere description. The plates given in Mr. Thom- 

 son's book were only of portions of fronds, showing the fructification, and this seems 

 to have been regarded as insufficient to enable identification of the plants. The price 

 has now been lowered, and I learn that it is selling far better in consequence. 



In this work, the descriptions will be all or nearly all illustrated ; and thus it is 

 hoped that the difficulty will be overcome. Till now, the only popular attempt that 

 has been made to illustrate the ferns pictorially was by some impressions, apparently 

 executed in splashwork, which were published several years ago, and were attributed 

 to Miss Dobie, who was murdered by a Maori near Opunake, or to her brother. They 

 were, however, so roughly got up that few people seemed to care to buy them : in fact, , 

 as the fructification of the ferns was not shown, it would have been almost impossible 

 to identify some of them from the drawings. In our plates, which are drawn from 

 actual specimens, I have given as nearly as possible the general appearance or form 

 of each fern : for the same plant often varies greatly in different localities, and at 

 different stages of growth. It may be noted here that, as a rule, young fronds are 

 more brightly tinted than old ones, but the amount of light where a plant grows greatly 

 affects i-ts colour. A fern, which is usually of a dark green, will often assume a golden 

 hue when the bush in which it grows is cleared, or partially so. The young fronds, 

 too, of some ferns present lovely shades of rose, purple, and orange ; the veins some- 

 times being of a different colour from the web of the frond. These colours die away 

 as the frond attains its full development and hue, and they cannot be preserved by 

 drying. They seem to depend on the soil, the young fronds of the same species 

 differing in colour in different places. Limestone soils appear to produce the brightest 

 colours. The limited size of the plates necessitated the use of small fronds from young 

 plants, for the illustrations, even though many of the coarse-foliaged ones were reduced 

 considerably in the drawings ; and in this way it may happen that the description of a 

 particular fern may represent it as more divided than the specimen drawn in the illus- 

 tration ; but still the latter will show the general character of the plant, so as to enable 

 it to be identified. 



Many fern collectors have been puzzled from time to time by the changes that 

 have taken place in the names of N. Z. ferns, the same plant being differently called 

 by different writers. This difficulty, however, is now disappearing, through the publi- 



