Abstract
THIS handsome work, which has been brought out in parts, issued about one every two months, beginning with 1878, is now completed. Although ferns have long been popular in the United States, both with collectors and cultivators, this is the first large illustrated monograph of the indigenous species which has been attempted. For our own country we have several, of which the best known are Hooker's “British Ferns,” with coloured figures, in large octavo; Lindley and Moore's “Nature Printed Ferns,” in more than one edition; and Newman's “British Ferns,” in which the plates are uncoloured woodcuts; but of the American ferns there are but few-figures, and those widely scattered in general works, and even leaving figures out of the question there has been no descriptive handbook specially devoted to them, so that those who wanted to work at the subject have been placed at a great disadvantage. Prof. Eaton, who is the grandson of a well-known botanical author, has been universally recognised for the last twenty years as the leading authority on the subject. He has a large library and general collection of his own, has visited Europe and studied the American ferns in the public herbaria of the Old World, has proved himself in other departments of botany to be a careful and judicious systematist, and he is a teacher of botany of many years' experience, and has been looked up to for a long time by all the collectors of ferns throughout the Union as their referee in cases of doubt and difficulty; so that he has had every advantage for dealing with his subject in a thorough and exhaustive manner, and as he has been ably seconded by his two artists, the result is a monograph which is thoroughly satisfactory in every way, and which will be universally accepted both at home and in Europe as a standard work.
The Ferns of North America; Coloured Figures and Descriptions, with Synonymy and Geographical Distribution, of the Ferns of the United States of North America and British North American Possessions.
By D. C. Eaton, Professor of Botany in Yale College. The Drawings by J. H. Emerton and C. E. Faxon. 2 Vols. quarto, pp. 352 and 285; 81 Plates, (Boston: S. E. Cassino, 1880.)
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BAKER, J. The Ferns of North America; Coloured Figures and Descriptions, with Synonymy and Geographical Distribution, of the Ferns of the United States of North America and British North American Possessions . Nature 23, 479–480 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/023479a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/023479a0
