BRITISH FERNS. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The Author desires, in this section of his hook, to introduce 
to his readers by actual representation as well as by verbal 
description, those beautiful members of the Fern family which 
are natives of the British Islands, but which, though natives 
of Britain, are nevertheless, many of them, distributed 
throughout Europe, America, Asia, Africa, and the Islands of 
the seas. 
If he were to attempt, in describing British Ferns, to give 
to each species, the various and contradictory names assigned 
to them by different botanical writers, or were to enter into 
any discussion concerning the multitudinous reasons — founded 
upon the theories, to a large extent purely fanciful, of par- 
ticular writers — for including certain species in or excluding 
them from this or that genus, he might easily occupy the 
whole space contained in this volume, to the exclusion of 
everything else which fills its pages ; and in the end he 
probably would only have succeeded in confusing the minds 
of his readers. 
What the Author has sought to do is to make the British 
species of Ferns known as dear and familiar friends ; so that 
they may become to those who read the following pages a 
living and loving memory. At the same time he is not to 
be understood as implying any disparagement of a scientific 
classification. In fact, appended to the ordinary English 
