A NEW GENUS OF FERNS.
There is perhaps no tribe of cryptogamous plants which since the time of Linnæus has received greater additions to its number of species, or more considerable improvements in its systematic arrangement, than the Filices; and certainly no botanist has so essentially contributed to these improvements as the President of this Society; whose ingenious Essay on Dorsiferous Ferns may justly be considered as the groundwork of the more complete dissertations of Professors Swartz and Bernhardi, which have appeared since its publication.[1]
Linnæus, in his latest work, the 13th edition of the Systema Vegetabilium, enumerates scarcely more than 200
Ferns, which he referred to twelve genera: while the
Species Plantarum of the late Professor Willdenow contains
upwards of a thousand plants of the same order, arranged
under forty-three genera. It is however remarkable, that
of this vast number of species nearly one half belong to
four of the Linnean genera, namely, Polypodium, Acrostichum,
Asplenium, and Pteris, all of which were first proposed
by Ray in his Methodus Plantarum Emendata, published
in 1703; without names, indeed, but with cha- [171
racters nearly similar to those of Linnaeus.
It appears, therefore, that the arrangement of Ferns at present universally followed is not wholly new: and that it has not attained such a degree of perfection as to super-
- ↑ An. 1793, in Mém. de l'Academie Royale des Sciences de Turin, vol. v, p. 401.
