PREFACE. WHEN the writer issued this little book in 1880 as the honest effort of a novice to provide for the study of our ferns a convenient handbook by means of which they might be identified, he had no idea that the first edition would be exhausted within a year, and much less that a sixth edition vould ever be called for. Though frequently urged to extend its scope, he has felt that if, with all the traces of its early imperfections of plan, there is still a demand for such a handbook, it is best to leave it in its original form, with only such changes as our changed conceptions of structures, relationships, and definition of species demand. No. t only is this preservation of the original plan in harmony with the feeling of sentiment, but it seems the more desirable since the writer is preparing a monograph of all the North American Ferns including those of the West Indies and the continent as far as the Isthmus, and in this more elaborate work he hopes from a study of a wider range of forms to include many more general matters that our own limited fern flora, though quite diverse, do. not furnish a sufficient basis for inclusion here, and others still that would be out of place in an elementary manual. Changes in this edition are mostly verbal and such as arise from the modifications of nomenclature or the changed ideas of homologies and relations of structures. The chapter on nomenclature has been wholly rewritten and extended, particularly because the present edition more than any other contributes to a modification of generic names. v vi PREFACE. In the systematic part the sequence has also been modified, bringing the simpler eusporangiate forms first and introducing thedesirable distinction between orders and families which botanists have too long confused. The number of species is considerably increased, owing. in part to new discoveries and in part to the seeming necessity of reestablishing the earlier and in many cases clearer views of the earlier writers on ferns, many of whose species have been reduced to synonymy by the English Kew school of fern writers whose dictum has hitherto been followed by American fern students. The number of genera has also been increased in accordance with the views of earlier and more scientific fern students. COLUMBIA U NIVERSITY Ju, ne, rgw. TABLE OF CONTENTS . I TRODUCTI . O .. N . ......................................... PAG ix E CHAPTER 1 . HAUNTS A ND HABITS OF FERNS . ............. I 11 . THE ORGANS O F THE GROWINGF ERN . ....... 8 111 . FRUCTIFICATIO I N N FERNS . .................. 10 IV . GERMINATIO O N F FERNS PORES . ............. I9 V . FERN STRUCTUR . E .. ......................... 21 V1 . THE FERN ALLIES . .......................... 28 VII . CLASSIFICATION AN D NOMENCLATU . R . E .. ..... 41 V111 . THE FERNS PLACE I N NATURE .. ............. 54 IX . DISTRIBUTION IN TIME AND SPACE . .......... 60 OUR NATIVE PTERIDOPHYTA . ORDER FILICALES . ORDER EQUISETALES . ORDER LYCOPODIALES . INTRODUCTION. i the entire vegetable world there are probably no forms of growth that attract more general notice than the Ferns. Delicate in foliage, they are sought for cultivation in conservatories and Wardian cases, and when dried and pressed add to t h i culture of many a domestic circle by serving as household decorations. They furnish to botanists a broad and inviting field for investigation, and he who examines theirmore minute structure with the microscope will find deeper and still more mysterious relations than those revealed to the unaided eye...