CHOICE BRITISH FERNS: 
Their Varieties and Culture. 
INTRODUCTION. 
those who have taken up the study of our 
native Ferns, and have thus been enabled to 
form a just opinion of the wealth of beautiful 
types into which our comparatively few British 
species have sported, either under natural con- 
ditions or under cultivation, it is a matter of 
surprise, and even bewilderment, that popularly 
they should be so little known and so rarely 
cultivated. This ignorance has been in no small 
degree shared apparently by popular writers on the subject, 
since in all but two or three works the varieties are relegated 
to an entirely subordinate place, while in some they are actually 
not even alluded to, though repeated editions have been issued 
ostensibly extending the field of view. What should we think 
of a much-bepufied Rose-book, or series of Rose-books, pro- 
fessing by their titles to exhaust the subject, while confining 
themselves exclusively to wild Roses, and never even distantly 
alluding to the glorious array of Marechal Riels, Gloire de 
Dijons, and the thousand-and-one other rivals to the throne 
