Vlll 
INTRODUCTION. 
moreover, the cultivation of Ferns is becoming fashionable. 
It is no longer confined to the professed horticulturist; 
hut every one possessing good taste has made, more or 
less successfully, an attempt to rear this tribe of plants. 
Ferns constitute so beautiful a portion of the creation, — 
whether they ornament our ruins with their light and 
graceful foliage, wave their bright tresses from our weather- 
beaten rocks, or clothe with evergreen verdure our forests 
and our hedgerows, — that it seems next to impossible to 
behold them without experiencing emotions of pleasure. 
Years before Ferns had become to me as friends with ‘'old 
familiar faces,” I could not pass them without turning to 
feast my eyes on what I thought their excessive loveliness ; 
and there is something to me peculiarly gratifying in 
watching the growth of each frond when under cultivation, 
— in tracing it from its first hutton-like appearance at the 
head of the rhizoma, through its circinate youth, — so like 
the classic volute, — to its fully developed and expanded 
maturity. 
It was while wandering among the Welch mountains, 
in the autumn of 1837, that I first felt any desire to know 
the names of Ferns. I had often observed the variety 
that half covered some of those bleak and desolate regions, 
where fern is cut, dried, and housed as the only litter that 
can he obtained for horses ; but now, for the first time, I 
gathered hundreds of fronds, and employed the evenings 
in arranging them into supposed species. I found that 
three species were abundant in the most dreary and ex- 
posed wilds ; but where some rill tumbled over a precipi- 
