PREFACE. 
IX 
the base occasionally, as in Polypodium Phegopteris, in the 
Moonwort and Adder’s Tongue. It is also sometimes 
branched above as in Scolopendrium vulgare, and the 
Female Fern : see N.F. plate 55, S. ramosum majus, and 
S. Coolingii, f. 744 ; and Athyrium filix-fcemina acrocladon, 
plate 38. The Female Fern is prolific in varieties. Mr. 
Clapham, of Scarborough, a master of fern-sports, stated to 
the writer — “ I gave a visitor a fertile frond of Athyrium 
f.f. Frizellise. He has raised from its spores 10,000 to 
12,000 plants : one to two thousand proved of normal form, 
but many are most singular in character, and, he tells me, 
scarcely two are altogether alike ! ” The Hart’s-Tongue is 
equally given to sport. This Fern, Mr. John Smith, of 
Kew Gardens, in his “ Ferns, British and Foreign,” justly 
describes as attaching itself to the works of man, such as 
walls of stone, brick, or turf, embankments, hedge and road- 
sides, pits, quarries, shafts, and deep open wells, and as 
being capable of adapting itself to the various conditions of 
dryness or dampness, protection or exposure, in which it 
thus finds a home The common Maidenhair Spleenwort, 
Wall Rue, Ceterach, and Polypody, may be classed with the 
Hart’s-Tongue, as domestic species, loving our weather-worn 
walls, and the ancient monuments of our parks and grave- 
yards. 
2. The Rachis exhibits greater variety of change than the 
Stipes, but its leading characteristic is a tendency to fork. 
This is indeed a prevalent feature in Ferns as well as in 
Ly copods, Jungermannias, &c. In Gleichenia dichotoma 
(figured in Mr. Lowe’s “ Ferns,” vol. 8 t. 21, a widely spread 
species in tropical regions of the south) the division by re- 
peated forking is remarkable. Lady Malkin described 
plants of that species, gathered in Penang, which extended 
sixteen feet in length. Every careful observer of Ferns 
is acquainted with examples of fronds bifurcate at the sum- 
mit, the forking continued in repeated divisions, f. 3, the 
