INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 
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By the term “ Ferns ” here used, we wish it to be understood 
in the sense in which it was employed by Linnaeus and other 
of the less recent systematic authors, viz. as including what are 
called more frequently than correctly their allied Groups or Sub¬ 
orders, to which belong respectively Osmunda ,, Ophioylossum , 
Lycopodium , Isoetes, Pilularia , and Equisetum , some of which 
are as different in aspect and structure from the true Ferns as 
are many other families of the Flowerless Plants. 
The main object we have in view in this publication is to give 
pictorial as well as descriptive representations of our native 
species, and we think we have a warrant for the fidelity of our 
figures in the name of our artist, Mr. Fitch. Of good descrip¬ 
tions of British Ferns there is no lack, from the able pens of 
many of our predecessors, as well as our contemporaries; but we 
cannot say the same of plates of British Ferns. Indeed, of those 
of Bolton, published three-quarters of a century ago, the first 
series of coloured plates of British Ferns that have appeared, 
to the latest figures that have been issued, it may truly be said 
that they do not bear that stamp of progress towards perfectness 
which the improved state of the art of design, and our increased 
knowledge of the plants in question, warrant us to look for. 
There is a lamentable absence, in all, of what is of the first con¬ 
sequence to the correct study of the Ferns, and to every tyro, 
namely, accurate representations of the parts of fructification 
upon which the essential generic characters depend, and of the 
venation. Such analysis, it is true, requires much research and 
careful and laborious investigation, and space in addition to what 
is occupied by the figures of the natural size. We purpose to re¬ 
present these upon such a scale as shall, with the majority at least 
of our subjects, be truly instructive figures, so that economy and 
accuracy may be alike consulted. The publisher, Mr. Lovell 
Beeve, has, and not without good reason, selected the ‘ Botanical 
Magazine/ originated by Curtis, as the pattern, with some slight 
modifications, for the work in question. That work, confined to 
exotic, chiefly phsenogamous, plants of our gardens, has been 
patronized by the public to such an extent as to have maintained 
its ground uninterruptedly for a period of seventy-four years, 
