PREFACE. 
“ I acknowledge no authority but that of observation.” 
Linn. 
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 
‘ Filices Britan nicse’), 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, if not to the 
practical botanist. 
The materials from which it has been compiled are these : — 
I inspected 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 descriptions 
whatever. I then collated these with the works of Linnaeus, 
Willdenow, Sprengel, Swartz, Pursh, Withering, Smith, Hooker, 
Lightfoot, Hudson, &c. &c., 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 
internal 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 
