4 
Of thiS; the first volume appeared in 1846, and the last 
in 1864. He planned also a condensed hand-book of all 
the known ferns, to be called Synopsis Filicwm, intended 
specially for the use of colonists and travellers. All 
the drawings for this had been made, but the letter-press 
was not far advanced when he died in the autumn of 
1865. It was completed by Mr. J. G. Baker, F.RS., 
now Keeper of the Herbarium, in 1868, and a second 
edition was brought out in 1874. Since that date many 
hundred new species have been discovered, and a volume 
of Hooker's I cones Plantariim, containing plates and 
descriptions of the more interesting of the novelties, was 
published in 1887. Mr. Baker has also published in 
the Annals of Botany (1891) a summary of new ferns 
discovered or described since 1874. The type specimens 
from which most of the descriptions and plates contained 
in this series of books have been made are deposited in 
the Kew Herbarium. 
The living collection in the garden owes its complete- 
ness very largely to the zeal and assiduity with which 
the veteran pteridologisb, Mr. John Smith, curator of the 
Eojal G.irdensfrom 1841-63, watched over it for more 
than 40 years. 
In his privately printed Records of Kew (pp. 322, 323) 
he gives the following particulars of its origin and 
development: — "In the year 1822 I found the collection 
of ferns at Kew extremely poor, especially as regards 
tropical species, very many of those introduced in 
previous years having been lost and very few new 
ones added. . , . The tender exotic species were 
more or less of them growing without any arrange- 
ment in different houses, and unnamed, their number 
