THE FERN WORLD 
iS2 
name of each Fern will be found its most commonly-accepted 
scientific name. But against this will, however, be placed 
an explanation of its particular significance — an explanation 
which will generally be found to furnish a reason for its 
selection. 
To what it is hoped may prove to be a popular and suffici- 
ently clear description of each species of Fern inhabiting 
Britain will be added an explanation of the positions, and a 
list of the localities in which it grows, and a series of cultural 
notes. 
Where species are grouped, the grouping will be arranged 
according to the most natural features of resemblance, and 
this arrangement will be found to accord very nearly with 
what the Author believes to be the most sensible system of 
classification adopted by botanists. 
It would be foreign to the purpose of the present volume 
to attempt to include within its pages a descriptive list of 
the immense number of variations from the normal forms of 
British species. Nothing perhaps has tended more effectually 
to discourage the study of Ferns than the publication of 
volumes whose pages have been overloaded with a mass of 
dry, and to the ordinary reader utterly incomprehensible 
descriptions of variations in the species, all of which have 
been labelled with Latin names — some of them extending to a 
length of more than forty letters. Of one of the most familiar 
of British Ferns — the common Hartstongue — lists have, for 
instance, been printed, in which five hundred variations from 
the normal form of the species have been enumerated. We 
forbear to give the number of letters which the nomenclature 
of these varieties has called into requisition. But the mere 
designation of the entire number has necessitated the use of 
nearly sixteen hundred Latin words. 
What has been attempted in the following pages is a 
careful and exhaustive description of the normal forms of 
