Excerpt from Our Native Ferns, or a History of the British Species and Their Varieties, Vol. 1: Polypodium, Allosorus, Gymnogramma, Polystichum, Lastrea; Containing Descriptions of Twenty-Two Species and Three Hundred and Eighty-Four Varieties of British Ferns The present work is written more especially to supply a pictorial want, to make the amateur acquainted with his Native Ferns Without the labour of botanical study. Some persons have not the time, whilst others have not the ineli nation, to study botany, and yet they possess the desire to know the plants they cultivate: to these pictures speak volumes. It is true that the British species have been des cribed by numerous authors, yet new species have gradually been discovered; but it is not the species that require publicity so much as the varieties of those species; many of them are distinct in character, and so various in form, that the Fern cultivator must include them amongst his choicest gems. So different are they from the species themselves, that it is in some instances difficult to know the parent from which they have sprung. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.