Excerpt from The Ferns (Filicales) Treated Comparatively With a View to Their Natural Classification, Vol. 1: Analytical Examination of the Criteria of Comparison Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. R. L. Stevenson, Essay on El Dorado. IN this passage Stevenson enunciates a truth that applies with singular force to those who enter on morphological enquiry. To travel hopefully is the chosen pursuit of all who study large groups of organisms with a view to reducing them to order, so as to throw light on their origin and evolution. In such quests no one need expect under present conditions to arrive at the final destination of complete and assured knowledge. If any one should indulge this hope his disappointment is certain. Even if he did so arrive, and found himself able fully to demonstrate the whole truth, how greatly would the quest lose in its interest. It is in the pursuit of his El Dorado of evolutionary history, not in the arrival there, that the true blessedness of the morphologist lies. It behoves then those who travel on this journey not to hurry unduly, but to consider with critical care the manner of their journeying, rather than to seek short cuts to an elusive goal. 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.