Album of pressed ferns collected in New South Wales and Fiji, c.1880.

Quarto (295 x 230 mm), original leather over boards with gilt-embossed decoration (rubbed); all edges gilt, watered silk pastedowns and endpapers; containing a chromolithographed title-leaf worded ‘Album’ and a further 25 leaves of thick card with lithographed borders in red, each with a pressed native fern specimen skilfully mounted on the recto; every specimen is accompanied by the collector’s manuscript caption in ink on the mount, giving the correct botanical name of the fern; the mounts toned and with offsetting, but all of the specimens attractively mounted and extremely well preserved, with virtually no loss evident.

Collecting and pressing native fern specimens was an extremely popular pastime in the nineteenth century – no less so in the Antipodes than elsewhere, as pteridomania (or fern fever) was undeniably already a phenomenon in Australia and New Zealand as early as the 1860s.

The present album contains ferns that were collected in New South Wales and Fiji. The specimens were clearly prepared by a private collector (perhaps even an academic?) with a keen interest in the botanical sciences: he/she was very particular about using the correct nomenclature in Latin (based on the system developed originally by Linnaeus) to describe each specimen in the album. Several ferns in the album are represented by more than one specimen. They include: Davallia fejeensis (native to Fiji); Davallia plumosa (native to Fiji); Tasselled Davallia (native to Fiji); (?)Cupaponica (annotated ‘Feeji fern’); Nephrodium (annotated ‘N.S.W.’); Pteris umbrosum (native to New South Wales and parts of Queensland and Victoria); Lycopodium (native to New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania); Dicksonia (native to eastern Australia); Nephrolepis (a tropical fern); Adiantum or bat wing; Aspidium or pig fern.