HISTORY OP INTRODUCTION OF EXOTIC FERNS. 7 
Feins existing at that period in British gardens, 
and not included in the “ Hortus Kewensis.” 
Speaking from my personal recollection of the im- 
portant collection of plants in the Hackney Nursery, 
as it existed in the year 1825, I think it contained 
about a hundred good species of exotic Ferns; but I 
can obtain no earlier catalogue than one published 
in 1849, in which two hundred and fifty-one are 
enumerated. 
In the year 1822 I found the collection of Ferns at 
Kew extremely poor, especially as regards Tropical 
species, very many of those introduced in previous 
years having been lost, and very few new ones added. 
Any person who remembers the hothouses in existence 
forty years ago, will have but little difficulty in 
accounting for the falling off of the Fern collection. 
In those days hot-water pipes were unknown, and 
the houses were exclusively heated by means of 
brick flues, too often imperfectly constructed, and 
the excessively dry and ungenial atmosphere thus 
induced was quite unsuited for the good cultivation 
or even for the mere preservation of these moisture- 
loving plants. Nearly all the North American species 
enumerated in the “Hortus Kewensis” were growing 
very finely in a north border, and most of the Madeira 
species were also in existence; but, including these 
and the few added since 1813, I cannot estimate the 
entire Kew collection of exotic Ferns at that period 
at more than forty species. 
Between 1813 and 1846, when my first Catalogue 
of the Ferns at Kew appeared, no reliable list 
was published in this country. Several, however, 
were brought out by Continental botanists, which 
