36 



cultivator has been fully justified in confining his selective 

 endeavours to our native species alone. Naturally the 

 " British Fern Gazette " has recorded and illustrated 

 these triumphs as fully as possible, and it needs but a 

 glance through its quarterly frontispieces to see what a 

 number of really new and advanced varieties have been 

 produced by selection, while every now and again it will 

 be seen that more desirable acquisitions have been added by 

 the assiduous hunter among the wild ferns of our country. 

 These sometimes, as in the recent case of the plumose Oak 

 Fern (P. dryoptevis plumosum. see Frontispiece) show that 

 Dame Nature is as fertile as ever in new devices, and 

 capable of entirely eclipsing in beauty a normal type 

 hitherto accepted as "perfect." From time to time in 

 the few years covered by the " Gazette" we have given a 

 resume of such discoveries and additions, but it is hardly 

 our intention at present to give another, our object being 

 rather to impress upon our members the fact that nearly 

 all our really valuable and definite improvements outside 

 Nature's own contributions in the shape of wild " sports " 

 are due to judicious sowing from recognized high class and 

 perfect forms and the subsequent elimination of all inferior 

 types which may present themselves in the offspring. 

 Given such a form, and as a salient illustration of what we 

 mean, we will take that unique fern, P. aculeatum pulcherri- 

 mum Beavis. It has of recent years been demonstrated 

 that undreamt-of possibilities may be nascent in its con- 

 stitution only awaiting the chance of declaring them- 

 selves and thereby adding not merely one, but several 

 more beautiful varietal sections to a species hitherto by 

 no means redundant in types. Not content apparently 

 with the production of the peculiarly charming "gracilli- 

 mum" and "plumosum" types of Mr. Druery and Mr. 

 Green, it has now presented Mr. Edwards with the 

 remarkable " foliosum " variety of a diametrically opposite 



