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THE JONES-FOX (AND OTHER) ANGULAEE 

 PLUMOSE-DIVISILOBES. 



These beautiful ferns made a great sensation among fern 

 lovers when they were first exhibited to the world some 

 thirty odd years ago. They are still among the very best 

 and most telling of British ferns, the admired alike of the 

 connoisseur and the raw beginner. This one fact is eloquent 

 testimony to their transcendent merits as decorative plants. 

 Their grace of form, exquisite finish, and perfect symmetry, 

 all tend to make them appeal strongly even to the most 

 untutored eye, while the more one knows of ferns and 

 their capabilities the more one appreciates the tremendous 

 advance which these ferns made upon anything previously 

 known. The exact origin of this section has never been 

 published and has been the subject of some discussion 

 and of more speculation. It is known that they were 

 raised by the collaboration of the late Col. A. M. Jones 

 and the late Mr. Edwin F. Fox. What part each played 

 and what was the material upon which they worked, how- 

 ever, is a matter which it was no one's particular business 

 to record and it was only after both men were dead that 

 the history began to be more exactly inquired into. Many 

 people (myself among the number) had been told that they 

 were raised from " decompositum splendens." But what 

 is decompositum splendens ? This name had been given, 

 in Col. Jones's time, to at least three different varieties of 

 angulare one of which {decomp. splendens Moly) is still in 

 existence as a living plant in the collection of Mr. Cranfield, 

 while of another (d. s. Williams) a dried frond, given to me 

 by Col. Jones, is in my possession. There is no doubt that 

 Mr. Moly was under the impression that his find was the 

 parent of the plumose divisilobes and this belief, in extreme 

 old age, he confided to Mr. Cranfield with great pride. 



