CLASSIFICATION OF FERNS. 



terminal on lobes growing next to the axil, and so much shortened as to be almost 

 obsolete, so that the sorus looks at first sight like a separate growth. It may be well 

 also to note that, though many of the ferns will be found to be described as having 

 creeping rhizomes, this usually only applies to well grown plants. All ferns, when 

 very young, are tufted plants. It is only after a longer or shorter time that some of 

 them begin to put forth the creeping rhizomes, and so overspread the surface on 

 which they grow. I mention this because, otherwise, some of my readers, on finding 

 a young plant of some species which was described as having creeping rhizomes, and 

 seeing that what they had found was simply a tufted plant, might suppose it to be 

 something different from what it really is. In the plates, any fern of which the fronds 

 spring direftly from creeping rhizomes has the rhizome shown : where there is no 

 rhizome shown, the fronds spring from an erect rhizome or caudex. Thus the plates 

 form a guide to the growth of each fern. 



There are several ferns respefting which a certain amount of doubt exists, as to 

 whether they are really New Zealand plants or not. They have been reported from 

 one or two localities, but there seems a question whether they have not been 

 accidentally introduced there, as spores from cultivated plants or otherwise. A similar 

 doubt exists as to one or two ferns that have been found in England ; but as the fact 

 of these last having been observed growing wild causes them to be included as English 

 plants, and the number of such introduced species is likely to increase rather than 

 diminish, I have judged it best to follow the same rule with doubtfully indigenous New 

 Zealand ones, and to give figures and descriptions of them, in order that anyone who 

 may chance to meet with them may know what they are. 



There are also some which have similarly been found in some one locality, and of 

 which descriptions have been furnished by the Revd. W. Colenso, though the 

 specimens from which those descriptions were drawn up have been sent to the Royal 

 Herbarium at Kew. In these cases, I have drawn the fronds from the Revd. gentle- 

 man's description and measurements ; and though possibly the drawings may not be 

 perfectly accurate, they will, I believe, be sufficiently so to enable any one meeting 

 with the plants, particularly in the localities from which they are reported, to identify 

 them. 



Probably some of my readers will wonder that, as the descriptions of the ferns 

 follow each other in regular order, according to their classification, the plates and 

 figures on them are not arranged in a similar sequence. It may be well therefore to 

 explain, that my first intention was to print the ferns in their natural colours, and 

 they were arranged according to those colours. It was found, however, that to 

 produce such work would make the book too costly for ordinary readers ; and 

 as my object in writing it has been to popularise the study of the New Zealand ferns, 

 by enabling non-scientific persons to identify them, I had to content myself with a 



