PREFACE. 
The pursuit of pteridology is at once a convenient 
inducement to healthful recreation in the midst of beauti- 
ful scenery, and a stimulus in one of its most attractive 
forms to the further study of Natural History, which is so 
useful and powerful a training of the faculties of observa- 
tion. For Ferns, — the tender gracefulness of which is 
everywhere allowed, unfolding from a stem whose slender 
unsightliness gives no heed to the opulence of beauty so 
suddenly to be displayed with a fidelity of likeness repro- 
duced in minutest detail, through a marvellous delicacy 
and exactness of cutting that may well excite our wonder, — 
will not alone continue to absorb the attention. Per- 
fumed orchids curious in growth and flower, panicled 
grasses and graceful lycopods, sculptured mosses and 
painted lichens ; precious gems in river beds, land shells 
and occasional fossils, offering Earth’s history as she has 
imprinted it ; butterflies mimicking one another’s paint- 
ing, sole bright colour between precipice and stream ; 
beetles brilliantly spotted ; birds of gayest plumage, more 
than 1,600 in number ; most gorgeously-coloured of all 
ocean fishes, most delicately painted of all sea shells, woo 
the lover of Natural History in these lands. 
Collection and nomenclature are then but first steps 
in a world of admiration and wonder ; — with increasing 
knowledge of the natural objects around us, in reverent 
enjoyment of all which the Creator for His pleasure has 
B 
