EDITORIAL. 



It is a rare thing for the owner of a publication to deliberately 

 invite competition, but the editor of the Fern Bulletin is about 

 to do tnis very thing by suggesting that it would be excellent 

 for fern study if other parts of the world had journals to repre- 

 sent it. A small publication covering Great Britain and the con- 

 tinent, another in Japan or India and still another in Australia 

 or at the Cape, would doubtless find means of existing, especiallv 

 since the Fern Bulletin has developed a wide circle of fern- 

 lovers, many of whom would doubtless subscribe to the 

 foreigners. This publication is pleased to think that in some 

 measure the wide-spread knowledge of American ferns is due to 

 its efforts, and believing this, suggests these other publications as 

 a means of making the ferns of other parts of the earth equally 

 well known. A new publication would of necessity have to begin 

 with few pages and grow with the growth of the study, but a 

 fern student with a turn for such things might find the experi- 

 ment worth trying. 



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Our thanks are due to Mr. W. H. Phillips, of Lemonfield, 

 Holywood, Ireland, for various pamphlets of his own, relating to 

 ferns. One of the most interesting of these is the list of his 

 wild finds which numbers upward of 200 plants. Most of these 

 are variants from the normal and the length of the list shows 

 what a fern student can do who has his eyes about him. Par- 

 ticularly pleasing, also, is his reminiscent paper upon his days 

 of fern hunting. 



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In this issue we publish a communication from the eminent 

 fern-student, Dr. H. Christ, in regard to the species of Scolopcn- 

 drium from Chiapas, Mexico, which Mr. W. R. Maxon has re- 

 cently given specific rank as Phyllitis Undent. For the benefit 

 of our readers who do not read French, we would say that Dr. 

 Christ, having lately received specimens from Chiapas, is con- 

 vinced that they are the same as Scolopendium vulgarc, the 



