Abstract
THE main and most valuable part of this work is a full account of Mr. Smith's scheme of fern-classification, with a complete catalogue of all the known species, arranged according to his views and diagnostic characters of all groups of a higher grade. The author is the patriarch of living fern writers, having worked at ferns with unwearied perseverance and enthusiasm for now upwards of fifty years. In 1823, when he first took charge of the living collection at Kew, it contained only forty species. Sir Wm. Hooker also, as is well known, made ferns his favourite department of botany for the last twenty-five years of his life. In 1846 the living collection had increased to 400, and in 1857 to 600 species. In 1864, when in consequence of failing eyesight Mr. Smith was compelled to resign his appointment, he estimated the number of ferns in cultivation in the country at upwards of 1,000. The whole number of species now known in the world, taking a broad view of what constitutes a species, is not far short of 3,000, and during the last year, certainly not less than fifty new ones have been added to the list.
Historia Filicum; an Exposition of the Nature, Number, and Organography of Ferns.
By Jno. Smith, Ex-Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew. With Thirty Lithographic Plates by Fitch. 8vo, 429 pp. (London: Macmillan and Co.)
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B., J. Historia Filicum; an Exposition of the Nature, Number, and Organography of Ferns . Nature 14, 286 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014286a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014286a0