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FERN CONFERENCE. 



WEDNESDAY, July 23, 1890. 



A Conference on Ferns was held at the Chiswick Gardens on 

 Wednesday, July 23. 



In- the absence, through illness, of J. Or. Baker, Esq., F.E.S., 

 President of the Conference, the chair was taken at 2 p.m. by 

 Dr. Maxwell T. Masters, F.R.S., who, in opening the proceedings, 

 expressed the regret that all lovers of Ferns felt at the absence 

 of Mr. Baker, whose presence would have been of so much 

 importance on this occasion, when questions of nomenclature 

 and of classification would have to be considered. The Chair- 

 man then read the following note sent by Mr. Baker : — 



" I am very sorry not to be able to be present personally at the 

 discussion this afternoon. What I particularly wished to bring 

 before the Congress is the very unsatisfactory condition at the 

 present time of the nomenclature of the varieties of British Ferns. 

 In Lindley and Moore's ' Nature-printed Ferns ' and in Lowe's 

 ' British Ferns ' (pub. 1867) a large number of varieties is de- 

 scribed and figured. About the nomenclature and identification 

 of these there is no difficulty. A very large addition is made to 

 these in Fraser's Catalogue of 1888, and since 18G8 Mr. Lowe 

 and others have added a large number of new names. For the 

 forms of the sixty British Ferns I am certainly not exaggerating 

 in saying that three thousand Latin names have been invented. 

 The result is a complete chaos, and I wish to appeal to Mr. Lowe, 

 who has worked so long and so actively in the field, to make an 

 attempt to put a stop to this state of tilings. The best way to do 

 this, so far as I can judge, would be to separate the true varieties 

 from the monstrosities and to classify the subordinate forms under 

 the leading types. A great number of the names have no bota- 

 nical standing, because they have not been published anywhere 

 with a definition. I very much wish Mr. Lowe would write a 

 paper on this basis for the Journal of the Horticultural Society, 

 codifying the nomenclature, and referring to the figures in 



