132 
NATURE STUDY. 
crowned kinglet (Regulus satrapa), which we have good 
reason to believe ought to winter around Manchester. 
Ferns and Fern Allies. V. 
BY FREDERICK W. BATCHFRDFR. 
In these latter days 
lution” has come, 
minds, to mean simply God’s 
way of making things, the study 
of the relationa of plants and 
groups of plants to each other 
has become more fascinating and 
more fruitful than the study of 
the plants themselves. 
Almost the first question we 
ask about a given plant is, what 
are its affinities? We wish to 
know its place in nature, its an¬ 
cestors, its present allies, wheth¬ 
er it belongs to a type which is 
advancing or retrograding, and 
even what its future prospects 
are in the struggle for existence. 
It is in the study of its affinities 
that the family under considera¬ 
tion, the adder-tongue family, 
is receiving the attention of bo¬ 
tanical specialists to a degree al¬ 
together out of proportion to its 
present standing in the plant 
kingdom. The family is literal¬ 
ly in reduced circumstances. 
Against the Polypodiaceae, with 
when the once frightful word 
in reverent 
“evo- 
i. 
Fig. 
70 or more genera and 
