125 
THE SCALE FERN. 
CETERACH OFFICINARUM, Willd. 
ERE are many ways in which a plant may become lost to a locality or 
to a country. We have already referred (p. ioi) to an instance in which 
a species has apparently disappeared, and that quite recently, from the 
vegetable world ; and it would not be difficult to cite others — for example, a 
species of Vetch ( Vicia Dennesiand) which was discovered, by Mr. T. C. Hunt, 
in the island of S. Miguel, Azores, about 1845, and which shortly afterwards 
ceased to exist in that locality, owing to a landslip which destroyed the 
isolated spot on which it grew. The British botanist is justly indignant 
with the “ mere collector,” as he is called with well-deserved scorn, who will 
imperil the existence of a rare plant by collecting it in large quantities, in 
order that he may enrich his own herbarium by a judicious system of 
exchanging the plant in question for other species which he desires to possess. People of this 
class are fortunately becoming more and more uncommon as the real study of plants advances, 
and as a complete hortus siccus ceases to be the main ambition of the so-called botanist ; but 
we are sure that all British botanists share in the feelings of alarm, of which we confess we 
are conscious, when we read that Professor has taken a large class of students to the 
almost solitary habitat of some rare member of our flora. By drainage, again, we have 
been almost, if not altogether, deprived of some rarity which will only grow in boggy or 
marshy lands, and which flies before the approach of civilisation in the shape of drain- 
pipes. True, we gain plants from time to time; it is not losses alone that the student of 
our British wild flowers has to chronicle; the American Water-weed (. Anacharis Alsinastnim . ), 
for instance — which the Cambridge undergraduates wickedly named Babingtonia damnosa, 
under the impression that it found its way into the Cam through the agency of the respected 
professor of botany at Cambridge — is as completely at home with us as if it had formed part 
of our flora since the time — 
When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, 
Arose from out the azure main 
but one can hardly help regretting that, as civilisation and progress inevitably change the 
natural features of our country, so do they affect even our native fauna and flora. 
It may fairly be asked, What has this to do with the Scale Fern, to which we ought at 
present to be directing our attention ? There is more connection between the two subjects than 
at first meets the eye; much more than that between Tenterden steeple and the Goodwin 
Sands, which has passed into a proverb. In one of its localities, the Isle of Anglesey, the 
Scale Fern was, towards the close of the last century, in imminent danger of becoming 
extinct, and that in a way which was as remarkable as it was unusual. Indeed, we might 
safely assert that no one would ever guess the cause which threatened its extinction, or indeed 
would ever credit it, did it not rest upon unimpeachable authority ; but the Rev. Hugh Davies, 
