BRITISH FERNS 



INTRODUCTION 



Although the species of Ferns indigenous to the British Isles are 

 comparatively few in number, contrasted with the multiplicity of 

 those found in tropical and sub-tropical regions, where the necessary 

 conditions of warmth and moisture prevail, and although these 

 selfsame species are in no instance confined to Britain, most of 

 them being widespread and as abundant in many other countries, 

 or even more so, than here, yet for some reason, difficult to explain, 

 they stand far and away above all outside Ferns, even those of 

 their own species, in the varietal phenomena they have exhibited. 

 That this is so may be judged by a comparison of the list of varieties 

 compiled in 1891 by Mr. E. J. Lowe in his British Ferns, and Where 

 Found, the wild finds of which, described and recognized as distinct, 

 number no less than 11 19, to which may undoubtedly be added a 

 considerable number of others, as fresh ones are continually turning 

 up, and it is incredible that even Mr. Lowe, with the aid of his many 

 Fern-loving friends, could have become aware of many casual 

 finds which have fallen to the lot of outsiders. Be this as it may, 

 the number mentioned suffices to show that under purely wild and 

 unsophisticated conditions, in our shady lanes, woods, and glens, 

 and in our roadside hedges, hedgebanks, old walls, and creviced 

 rocks, our native Ferns have a most remarkable faculty for depart- 

 ing from the normal type, adopting new ones on most diverse lines, 

 and, in point of fact, by their constancy and capacity for trans- 

 mitting their peculiarities through their spores to their offspring, 

 of fulfilling all the definitions of fresh species. Exotic Ferns, it is 

 true, have afforded a number of wild sports, but the great majority 

 of those which we see at our shows and in our botanical gardens 

 have varied under cultivation on selective lines, and it is a re- 

 markable fact that we have numerous types of variation in our 

 native species, to which no approach whatever has been made by 

 the exotic sports, of which the majority belong to the crested 

 section, a few to the plumose or extra feathery section, while out- 

 side these there are few or none. One very feasible explanation of 



