344 
OPHIOGLOSSACEiE. 
Mr. Templeton’s MSS. several Antrim localities for Botrychium 
are recorded ; some of these are scarcely above the level of the 
sea, and others have an elevation of nearly 1000 feet : Mr. Tem- 
pleton observes that about the Roughfort it is as plentiful as 
grasses or other foliage.” Mr. Thompson observes that he has 
not seen it in all the localities discovered by Mr. Templeton, 
but that it is common in the mountain pastures about Belfast, 
and he has met with it at Altmore glen, near Cushendall. 
Down. — The late Mr. Templeton has recorded Scrabo in this 
county as a locality. 
Londonderry. — Mr. Moore showed me specimens from the 
Benyvena mountains, near Magelligan. 
Wicklow. — From Mr. W. Thompson I learn that the late 
Mr. Templeton found it on the lawn at Luggelaw, and in the 
Powerscourt demesne. 
The Moonwort is found throughout Europe ; and a very simi- 
lar species — some botanists consider it identical ™ throughout 
North America. 
The figure of this plant in Sowerby’s ‘ English Botany,’ * 
under the name of Osmunda lunaria^ gives a correct idea of its 
appearance, but that in Bolton’s ‘ Filices,’f under the same name, 
is decidedly bad. 
The genus Botrychium was divided by Swartz from the Lin- 
neaii genus Osmunda^ and has been adopted by nearly all sub- 
sequent botanists. The Linnean specific name of lunaria has 
remained unchanged. 
It is rather amusing than instructive to read the virtues as- 
cribed by Dioscorides, and other ancient writers, to nearly the 
whole family of ferns. Of the present species much has been 
written, and the most wonderful magical properties have been 
assigned to it. This we may trace, in a great measure, to the 
singular form of the pinnae : all those plants whose leaves bore 
even a fancied resemblance to the moon — and the name clearly 
implies that this was the case in the present instance — were 
formerly regarded with a most superstitious veneration. From 
all record we find that they were to be gathered by the light of 
* Eng. Bot, 318. 
t Bolt. Fil. lab. 24. 
