THE ALPINE BLADDER FERN. i 271 
The only authenticated habitat for this plant is a wall at Low 
Leyton, in Essex, where, at the close of the last century, it existed 
in such great plenty as to forbid the notion of its being, at that early 
date, an introduced species. We have elsewhere stated* that Mr. 
W. Pamplin has told us, he well remembers when a boy, being 
in company with his father, who drove up to the road-side wall on 
which the ‘rare fern’ grew, and at that time the appearance of the 
plant, still fresh in his memory, was as if parsley had been sown 
along the wall. This Cystopteris does not spread rapidly, and such 
an appearance, even if somewhat exaggerated by childish inex- 
perience, could only have resulted from its having been long esta- 
blished there. The observation itself must have been made nearly 
or quite at the beginning of the present century, and the considera- 
tion of its quantity at that period would carry back the date to near 
a century from the present time, so that one naturally inquires, who 
then cared for or cultivated or could have artificially or accidentally 
introduced such a plant. Now, when there is such a furor for ferns, 
a European species might become naturalised through the proximity 
of cultivated specimens, but this was hardly likely to happen in the 
middle of the last century. The plant is at the present time, 
unfortunately, nearly destroyed by repairs, though it exists in more 
than one station in the neighbourhood. We have received authentic 
Specimens of this species, said to have been gathered in Derbyshire 
and in Yorkshire, but without more particular habitats assigned, from 
Mr. H. Shepherd. The various alpine British stations which have 
been reported for this plant probably belong rather to small much- 
divided forms of C. fragilis. We have not seen a native mountain 
specimen of C. regia, unless it be one from Saddleback, in Cumber- 
land, gathered many years since by Mr. S. F. Gray. 
This elegant plant is plentiful in many localities in the Alps of 
Switzerland, Carinthia, Styria, &c. It is also said to occur in 
Sweden, in Belgium, in France, Spain, and Italy, in. Dalmatia, 
Croatia, Hungary, and Transylvania; in Greece on Mount Taygetus, 
in the Morea, and on Mount Athos in the peninsula of Chaleis. It 
also occurs on Mount Taurus in Asia Minor. 
* Moore, Hooker's Kew Journal of Botany, viii. 25. 

