4 
HISTORY OF BRITISH FERNS. 
pleasing, even to those who are slow to perceive beauty 
apart from rich and gaudy colouring. 
The number of the native species of Ferns may be taken 
at from forty to fifty, according as some of the more doubt¬ 
ful forms are ranked as species or varieties. In a botanical 
point of view, the lower estimate is probably the more 
correct, as the experience we have of the variability of 
some of the so-called species tends somewhat to the con¬ 
clusion that they are insensibly united by intermediate 
forms. In so far, however, as their cultivation is concerned, 
or when the Ferns are taken up as a “fancy/’ the higher 
number is too low; for in all such cases, whenever one 
plant is palpably different from another, it forms a legiti¬ 
mate subject for culture, or for study, as a distinct object, 
though the differences may be of such a character as would 
lead the rigid botanist to brand it as being one of those 
which he considers not “ specifically distinct ” from others 
with which he would have it associated. 
There is some acrimony, and a good deal of pedantry 
abroad, on both sides of this question, of the limits of the 
species of plants, with which, happily, in this brief descrip¬ 
tive history of the British Ferns, we shall have no occasion 
to intermeddle. 
