personally interested, either as finder of the wild originals 

 or as raiser of improvements thereof; and here, though our 

 collection is numerically small, we feel that we have 

 certainly been peculiarly highly favoured by fortune 

 during our Fern loving career, so large is the number and 

 so beautiful are the plants that we can claim as our very 

 own for the reasons given. Two of the most prominent 

 specimens with many four feet fronds, though as yet with 

 the outward pendulous tips peculiar to the developing 

 Polystichum, are from divisions of P. aculeatum pulcher- 

 rimutn Beavis, a Fern which, even as Dame Nature 

 shapes it in its wild form, ranks with the most stately 

 Ferns we Britons possess, but which, of course, we cannot 

 claim as a personal find as it fell to the lot of a farm 

 labourer, who, though not an expert, was sufficiently 

 struck by its exceptional beauty and difference from its 

 normal companions, that he at once took it to Dr. Wills, 

 close by in Dorset, and thus secured it for future genera- 

 tions. For forty years, however, though liberal in offsets, 

 and thus widely distributed in time by Dr. Wills and his 

 friends, it was assumed to be barren of spores, but in 

 recent years a few were discovered. The result of this dis- 

 covery was astounding, and looking round the "temple" 

 aforesaid, we may perceive a row of its much more beauti- 

 ful offspring in the shape of grand plants of the now 

 well-known gracillimum strain, Green's plumcsum, and a 

 handsome variant named provisionally " diversifrons," as 

 in some years it bears fronds of somewhat different 

 cutting. Each of these plants has its peculiarities of 

 makes, but the gracillimums are very similar, the ultimate 

 divisions being very slender, long and delicate, giving an 

 entirely different aspect to the plant from that of the 

 parental one. The parental form has the peculiarity 

 that at the apex of the frond the side divisions turn 

 inwards and lap over the midrib so as to form a long 



