Qo BRITISH FERNS. 
prejudice, or any similar cause; but entirely from 
a conviction on the part of the author that in 
changing these names he was performing a neces- 
sary duty, and conferring a benefit on the student; 
indeed he weighed the matter well, and firmly 
believed that the later were the better names: no 
one who has studied, as I have done, the beneficent 
and candid character of Sir J. E. Smith, would 
hesitate to conclude, as I conclude, that in every 
change he proposed he conscientiously believed he 
was doing a service to his favourite science; he 
thought the newer names better than the older; 
more classical or more euphonious, or more descrip- 
tive, or possessed of some other decided advantage. 
Several more recent authors who do not possess the 
merits of our greatest English Botanist, have yet 
thought themselves entitled to follow his example 
in changing the names of ferns, and thus we are 
encumbered with a most unhappy confusion of 
names; and collectors are continually saying, “I 
follow Smith,” or “ Hooker,” or “Babington,” or 
even “ Bentham” or “ Walker Arnott,” and 
rather to take pleasure in asserting their tight to 
