18 
I. 
TOISTGIIEWOETS. OPHIOGLOSSACE^E. 
These are the least resembling Eerns of the three British 
Sub-orders. We have placed them first on the list, as being 
the most natural transition from the fiowering plants. In 
many respects they difier from the others. The rusty fruit 
is not on the back of the frond, but on a separate spike 
merely attached to the base. The buds do not roll in. The 
veins are not even distinct in the Adderstongues, but mix 
one 'with another, as in a large portion of the flowering 
plants (the Exogens.) They also do not grow in 'W’oods or 
shady hedge-banks, or walls, or rocks, but are almost always 
to be found in the open fields or downs. Throughout the 
world this is a small Sub-order. We have but one species 
to each genus. 
I. Addeestongues. Ophioqlossa. 
Plate I, fig. 1. 
** For them, that are with newts, or snakes or adders stung, 
He seeking out an herb that’s called Adderstongue, 
As nature it ordained its own like hurt to cure 
And sportive did herself to niceties inure.” 
Adderstongue. Ophioglossum vulgatum. The leaf of 
this plant, for we can hardly call it a frond, is egg-shaped, 
net-veined. It has a pale green colour, from four to ten 
inches high. The spike on which the fructification lies, 
issues from the sheathing part of the leaf, and is generally 
of the same height, sometimes much higher. The fruit- 
bearing part is generally rather shorter than the other 
part of the spike beneath. When it is ripe, it appears 
notched on each side, bearing some resemblance to the teeth 
of a blunt saw. We almost always find it growing in stiff 
and badly drained clay fields. Cultivation will diminish, 
but not altogether exterminate it. A friend informs us, 
that “in some fields to the north of Wootton, a village near 
