INTRODUCTION. 
CHAPTER I. 
PRELIMINARY REMARKS. 
GENERAL FEATURES.—Flowering and Flowerless plants—Distinctions between Ferns 
and Flowering plants—Distinction between Ferns and other Flowerless plants— 
Variety of character and aspect—Popular estimation of Ferns—Choice of materials 
‘for study. 
Tur two great classes into which the vegetable kingdom is divided, 
and to which the terms FLOWERING PLANTS and FLOWERLESS PLANTS 
are popularly given, are, in the perfect state, readily distinguishable 
from each other by the peculiar features indicated in the terms thus 
applied to them. In the one class, flowers followed by seeds, form- 
ing the appointed means by which the Almighty fiat, “increase and 
multiply,” is carried out, are developed in due course upon the 
parent plant. In the other class, there are no parts produced cor- 
responding to flowers; the stem bears leaves only, these leaves 
having their own varied peculiarities of development, among which, 
however, is always to be found the property of forming, for the pur- 
pose of multiplication, a peculiar form of germ-bud, to which the 
name of spore is given. 
It is to the second of these primary classes, that distinguished by 
the name of Flowerless Plants, and bearing spores instead of seeds, 
that the Ferns belong. 
Among the secondary groups which, equally with themselves, form 
part of this great Flowerless class of vegetation, the Ferns are 
distinguished mainly by the nature and position of the little cases 
VOL. I. B 

