BEAUTIFUL FERNS. FROM ORIGINAL WATER-COLOR DRAWINGS AFTER NATURE, By C. E. FAXON and J. H. EMERTON. Descriptive Text by Daniel Cady Eaton, PROFESSOR OF BOTANY IN YALE COLLEGE. BOSTON: ESTES AND LAURIAT. 1886. _Copyright, 1885_, By H. B. Nims and Company. ILLUSTRATIONS. American Maiden-Hair Ostrich-Fern Alpine Beech-Fern Fragrant Wood-Fern Goldie’s Wood-Fern Webby Lip-Fern Eaton’s Lip-Fern Male Fern Trifoliate Cliff-Brake Clayton’s Cliff-Brake Slender Cliff-Brake Evergreen Wood-Fern Walking-Leaf Pinnatifid Spleenwort Sensitive Fern AMERICAN MAIDEN-HAIR. [Illustration: ] ADIANTUM PEDATUM, Linnæus. American Maiden-hair. Adiantum pedatum:—Root-stock creeping, scaly, and copiously rooting; stalks scattered, a foot or more high, dark-brown and polished, forked at the top; fronds six to fifteen inches broad, membranaceous, smooth, spreading nearly horizontally, composed of several (six to fourteen) slender divisions radiating from the outer side of the recurved branches of the stalk, and bearing numerous oblong or triangular-oblong short-stalked pinnules having the lower margin entire and often slightly concave, the base parallel with the polished hairlike rachis, the upper margin lobed or cleft and bearing a few oblong-lunate or transversely linear reflexed involucres; sporangia on the inner surface of the involucres (as in all _Adianta_), borne on the extended apices of the free forking veinlets, which proceed from a principal vein closely parallel to the lower margin of the pinnule. _Adiantum pedatum_, Linnæus, Sp. Pl., p. 1557.—Thunberg, Flora Japonica, p. 339.—Swartz, Syn. Fil., p. 121.—Schkuhr, Krypt. Gew., p. 107, t. 115.—Willdenow, Sp. Pl., v., p. 438.—Michaux, Fl. Bor. Am., ii., p. 263.—Pursh, Fl. Am. Sept., ii., p. 670.—Torrey, Fl. of N. Y., ii., p. 487.—Gray, Manual.—Ruprecht, Distrib. Crypt. Vasc., in Imp. Ross., p. 49.—Hooker, Sp. Fil., ii., p. 28.—Brackenridge, Filices of the U. S. Expl. Exped., p. 100.—Eaton, in Parry’s Exped. to Japan, ii., p. 329.—Maximowicz, Primitiæ Fl. Amurensis, p. 341.—Mettenius, Fil. Hort. Lips., p. 47; Prolusio Fl. Japon. in Ann. Mus. Bot. Lugd.-Batav., iii., p. 171.—Hooker & Baker, Syn. Fil., p. 125.—Milde, Fil. Eur. et Atl., p. 31.—Keyserling, Gen. Adiantum, in Mem. Acad. Petrop., ser. vii., xxii., No. 2, pp. 5, 28. _Adiantum Americanum_, Cornutus, Canad. Pl. Hist., p. 7, t. 6 (1635). _Maiden Hair, or Cappellus veneris verus_, Josselyn, New Englands Rarities Discovered, p. 55 (1672).