Introduction. 
xli 
Miss Anne Pratt’s book, “ The Ferns of Great Britain,” deserves a reference, although 
it is hardly as useful or thorough as the one just noticed. It contains good coloured figures 
of the species, with full and pleasantly-written descriptions, in which is brought together a good 
deal of information regarding ferns in general. 
GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION OF FERNS. 
The story of plant life on the globe, as far as materials have been discovered which can 
be referred to their place in the vegetable kingdom, begins with this group of plants. The 
presence of immense quantities of carbon in the oldest stratified rocks testify to the existence of 
plants long anterior to the period when the strata were deposited in which definite remains 
have been found. And, indeed, the active life of innumerable plants had been necessary from 
the time that animals appeared, in order to supply their necessary food, and to consume the 
poisonous carbonic acid gas which they continually give off. But no recognisable remains have 
been preserved to testify to the kind of plants that played this important part in the primeval 
economy of our planet. Doubtful impressions have been detected in Silurian rocks, and these, 
with the exception of some remarkable Algae, belong to the ferns, or their allies the club- 
mosses. 
It is in the Devonian rocks that the first fairly recognisable plant remains occur. And 
here the predominant forms are ferns. Associated with them are found some horse-tails, and 
several species of club-mosses. 
Some of the ferns have been preserved so completely that it is not difficult to determine 
with certainty their true place in the Order. The description of one species may be given at 
some length, as it is a typical Palaeozoic fern, and a characteristic fossil of the Devonian period. 
The plant referred to is found in considerable abundance in the yellow shales of Kiltorcan, in 
the south of Ireland, and less frequently in beds of the same age in the south of Scotland. 
Edward Forbes, who first described it, gave it the name of Cyclopteris hibernica. It has been 
since separated, as the type of a new genus, and is called PalcEopteris hibernica of Schimper. 
All the parts of the plant have been found. The frond is ovate-lanceolate in outline, some- 
what truncate at the base. The stipes was of considerable length, and clothed with a dense 
mass of thin scales at its somewhat enlarged base. The well-defined termination of the stipes 
indicates that it was articulated to the stem, and the root-like fossil found in the shales is, 
there can be little doubt, the creeping stem or rhizome. The frond is bipinnate, and the 
pinnae are linear, obtuse, and almost sessile. The pinnules are numerous, overlapping, and of 
an obovate or oblong-obovate form, somewhat cuneate at the base, which is decurrent on the 
rachis. The veins are numerous, uniform, and repeatedly dichotomous from the base : they run 
out to the margin forming a delicate venation. Single large pinnules of the same form occur on 
either side of the main rachis in the spaces between the pinnae. The fructification is borne on 
the altered pinnae of the lower part of the frond. The fertile pinnules are reduced to a central 
midrib, with short hair-like veins, which are the pedicels of the cup-shaped indusia. These are 
ovate, oblong cups, divided about a third down from the apex into two lips. The pedicel or 
vein passes into the cup as a free central receptacle, but does not extend beyond the lips of 
the cup. Occasionally the receptacle is found to be broad or thick, as if it were covered with 
sporangia, but the preservation of the fossils is not sufficiently perfect to exhibit the forms of 
the individual sporangia. There is nothing in these characters which would justify this fern 
being separated from the genus Hynienophylhim. The fronds attained no doubt to a much greater 
£29 
