416 BRITISH FERNS 



It is true that in a general way the finely-cut varieties have a 

 greater tendency than others to be proliferous, but it is now known 

 that this habit is very general among varieties of angulare, and is 

 sometimes seen even in the normal form. " I have generally found," 

 writes Mr. Padley, "that the Ferns having a hard, woody rachis 

 are the ones most proliferous, such as acutilobe, multilobe, lineare, 

 etc." Forms of brachiato-cristatum are nearly all proliferous, and 

 in some cases not only near the brachiation. Mr. Witts's ftu/cherri- 

 nium and some forms of revolvens are regularly proliferous, and a 

 variety of cristatum found by the late Dr. Moore in Ireland has 

 often bulbs extending half-way up the frond. 



It is also now known that there are many varieties which in 

 every important particular are identical in character with the 

 proliferous forms, — and yet they are not proliferous at all, or very 

 slightly so. 



It would seem, therefore, that the proliferous habit is both too 

 general and (even in the class of varieties where it is most common) 

 too arbitrary in its appearance, to entitle it to give a name to any 

 class of varieties. 



Nor is the name at all descriptive of the very marked character of 

 the class to which these, perhaps the most beautiful of all the 

 forms of angulare, belong. 



The variations, too, of character among these finely-cut varieties 

 are now, — owing to the discoveries of Mr. Padley, Mr. Moly, Mr. 

 Wollaston, Mr. Elworthy, Mr. R. Gray, Dr. Allchin, Mr. Wills, 

 Mrs. Thompson, and Dadds, Hillman, and Moule, — known to be so 

 great that they can no longer be mingled together without con- 

 siderable confusion of ideas. Mr. Wollaston was the first to 

 meet this difficulty by a subdivision of the class of finely-cut 

 varieties into three classes ; with respect to which he has himself 

 supplied the following descriptive notes : — 



" Multilobum, an excess of decomposilum, — the whole plant 

 being more or less tripinnate, but the division of the pinnules or 

 pinnulets more or less abnormally rounded, and in this respect 

 differing from the two that follow, which have these portions much 

 more acute. 



thought by some that the proliferous character was more or less the habit of 

 that class, and that it was confined to it ; subsequent discoveries, however, 

 proved that in neither respect was this the case ; the name therefore lost much 

 of its appropriateness. 



