A HISTORY 
OF 
BRITISH FERNS, &c. 
It is with a feeling of some regret that I am compelled to ac- 
knowdedge my inability to define, with anything like precision, 
the group including those plants of which it is the object of the 
following pages to treat. I can, indeed, plead abundant prece- 
dent for associating them together ; and I believe it will be the 
wiser course, in this instance, to be ruled by authority, rather 
than attempt the defence of a combination, which certainly ap- 
pears, in some respects, of questionable propriety ; and here I 
must further observe that the arrangement and nomenclature 
proposed in this Synopsis are but partially adopted in the body 
of .the work. 
Linneus proposed for this group of plants the name Filices, 
and placed them as the first order of his twenty-fourth class — 
Cryptogaraia ; and by far the greater number of succeeding bo- 
tanists appear to have approved and followed the same course. 
I venture however to suggest that the group, in modern classifi- 
cation, is of higher rank than order^ a term which I propose 
transferring to its six* principal divisions, as under. 
* It may here be remarked that the species of Chara form a group very ana- 
logous to the Equisetacece. Lamarck and DeCandolle unite the genera Chara, 
Nayas jind Lemna in a family called Nayades, placing it immediately after the 
Equisetacece, which they treat as another family of equal value. If this view of 
the case he correct, we have seven orders of filicoid plants, which follow the law 
pointed out in my essay, ‘ 'J'he System of Nature,’ as constituting three pairs of 
circumferential and a normal central group ; thus : — 
