PREFACE. 
“I acknowledge no authority but tliat of observation.” — L inn 
This motto was my governing principle in writing the following 
work on the British Ferns and their allies, and in adopting it I hope 
that I shall neither be accused of arrogance, neglect of the opinion 
of others, nor yet of unnecessarily varying the details of science. 
Should the reader ask why I write at all ; I answer, because the only 
book ever published upon this subject (Bolton’s Eilices Britannicie) 
has long been out of print, and so much difference of opinion exists 
as to the identity of some species, and the arrangement of others, 
that I thought a plain and practical synopsis like the present would 
be useful to the tyro at least, if not to the practical Botanist. 
The materials from which it has been compiled are these: I in- 
spected all the Herbaria to which I had access, gathered wild and 
cultivated fronds wherever I could procure them, and wrote to most 
of our first-rate Botanists for specimens, remarks, and habitats : 
all these being collected, arranged, and studied, they were described 
and engraved without reference to any series of plates or descrip- 
tions whatever. I then collated these with the works of Linnaeus, 
Willdenow, Sprengel, Swartz, Pursh, Withering, Smith, Hooker, 
Lightfoot, Hudson, &c. See., and wherever there was a difference 
between myself and others, I searched again for the truth ; and if 
still in doubt, have been careful to record the disparity. 
The long introductory matter explains all that is known of the in- 
ternal structure not only of the indigenous species, but of foreign 
also, and as it tends to induce in the mind a philosophical knowledge 
of the plants afterwards detailed, I flatter myself that the part de- 
voted to this will not be the least valuable to the student of nature. 
The manner in which the object has been accomplished, it is ne- 
cessary to explain more in detail : and first, as to the illustrative 
