INTRODUCTION. 
fir. .V 
Bi^TANICAL 
HE aim of “The Fern Portfolio ” is the production of a series of life-size 
representations of the fronds of Ferns, with accompanying letterpress 
descriptions. The text is intended to be quite subordinate to the plates. 
These it is the especial object of the work to render absolutely life-like 
pictures of the plants from which they are drawn ; and infinite pains have 
been taken to attain this object. 
A common, and it may, indeed, be said to be the general, method of botanical illustra- 
tion is to give an approximate drawing of the outline of the leaf or frond of a plant, with 
a few “ artistic ” scratches, lightly dashed off, to indicate the course of the mid and side, or 
branch, veins, and to throw colour in — where it is employed — with just shading enough to 
give an approximate idea of the hue ; and no attempt has ever been made to produce an 
absolute fac-smiile — in form, colour, and venation (by which is meant the veining, or system 
of veins) of a plant leaf or frond. 
The Author of this volume was the first to attempt to depart from this common, and 
inexact, method of plant illustration; and in “Our Woodland Trees,” first published in 
1878, he gave, in a series of eight plates, fac-swiileSy in outline, in veining, and in colour, 
of the leaves of British trees. In 1881 he published, in “Autumnal Feaves,” another set 
of twelve plates, giving, on precisely the same plan, facsimiles^ in the form of 252 figures, 
of autumn-tinted foliage. The high praise lavished by the entire British press upon these 
attempts to picture the exceeding beauty of the leaves of trees when in the height of their 
summer sheen, and when under the glow of their departing hues, furnished the inducement 
to represent Ferns in a similar manner, but with the difference that the fronds of the 
flowerless plants should be life-size. The leaf fac-similes in “Our Woodland Trees” and 
in “Autumnal Leaves” were reduced in the drawings — to accommodate the latter to the 
size of large post octavo volumes — to one-fourth of their natural size. Leaves, moreover, 
lose very little by the process of reduction, because, even in the case of the smaller ones, 
the reduced figures are large enough to enable the details of the characteristic venation to 
be clearly seen. But with Ferns the case is different, and the venation of the smaller parts 
could not be shown unless these were reproduced life-size. 
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As no adequate representation of natural-sized specimens could be given without space 
enough to include an entire frond in the case of the majority of the species, the size selected 
for this work is sixteen by twelve inches. Even within these limits it is, of course, 
impossible to give the w'hole frond in the case of such large kinds as the Royal Fern and 
the Bracken : and, in general, moderately-sized specimens have been selected for purposes of 
illustration ; but where a portion is given of a frond — in two cases only in this volume — 
that portion is still life-size. 
The object of “The Fern Portfolio,” it is repeated, is to give absolutely life-like 
pictures of Ferns — pictures so true to nature, in every detail, that identification of the 
