THE LITERATURE OF FERNS. 41 



of ferns in common with North America, we can 

 consult some of the local works on British ferns 

 with profit. The best of these is Hooker's Brit- 

 ish Ferns; another excellent one is The Ferns 

 OF Great Britain, and their Allies, by Sow- 

 erby and Johnson. The latter is almost the only 

 work which gives plates of the Characece. They 

 are both rather costly books. 



Moore's Nature-Printed British Ferns is 

 published in two forms, folio and 8vo. The 8vo 

 edition forms two volumes of a series which in- 

 cludes AlgcB, &c. The folio edition costs about 



Among the cheapest of all books on ferns is A 

 Fern-Book for Everybody, by M. C. Cooke ; a 

 small i2mo, with colored plates and 124 pages of 

 text. Very like this book also is British Ferns, 

 by Thomas Moore. These books sell in England 

 for a shilling : by the time they reach us, their price 

 is seventy-five cents ; but that is cheap enough for 

 the amount of valuable information contained with- 

 in their paper covers. Besides the books here men- 

 tioned, the English press has issued many volumes 

 on ferns, high and low priced, of which some of 

 the earlier ones are especially good even now, while 

 many of the later are crude and hastily written, 

 having apparently been produced at the sudden 

 demand of a fancy or a market. 



The works so far considered relate to the system- 



