ON A COLLECTION OF BORNEAN MOSSES. 291 
On a Collection of Bornean Mosses made by the Rev. C, H. Binstead, 
By Н. №, Dixos, M.A., F.L.S. 
(PLATES 26, 27.) 
Read 6th May, 1915.) 
А CONSIDERABLE number of collectors have brought back mosses from 
Borneo, from the early days of Korthals, Teysmann, and Motley onwards, 
but there has been very little published on the bryology of the island as a 
Whole. Most of the records of these collections have been intercalated 
among those from other localities : e. g., in Mitten’s ‘Samoan Mosses,’ Dozy 
and Molkenboer’s ‘ Musci Inediti Archip. Indici? and the * Bryologia 
Javanica ’ ; the only papers of any importance of which I am aware dealing 
exclusively with the mosses of Borneo being Hampe's description of the 
mosses collected there by Beccari (1872), and the five pages devoted to the 
Muscineæ, by Mitten and Wright, of our own Transactions, in Dr. Stapf's 
* Flora of Mt. Kinabalu.” 
It is most desirable that the scattered records should be brought together, 
and some attempt made at a Prodromus of the Moss-flora of this large and 
botanically important island, and I had at first thought of incorporating my 
account of Mr. Binstead’s mosses in an attempt to carry this out. I learnt, 
however, from Herr Max Fleischer—whose “ Musei der Flora von Buitenzorg ” 
has done much to form a preliminary basis for such a work—that he had 
abundant material at the present time from various collectors in Borneo, 
only partially worked out. Any thought on my part, therefore, of carrying 
out such a scheme would seem peculiarly inopportune at the present 
time. I have, therefore, practically confined myself to describing the 
collection of mosses made by the Rev. C. H. Binstead during a stay of a 
month or more in British North Borneo during April-May, 1913, part in 
a limited area on the coastal region of the north-eastern projection of the 
island, and part about Tenom, some few miles from the west coast, reached 
by rail from Jesselton. 
The former collection brought out in a very interesting way the peculiar 
ecological distribution of the remarkable and striking genera Syrrhopodon 
and Calymperes. These two genera, numbering between them at least 
450 species, are found in every quarter of the tropical and sub-tropical world, 
a single species being stranded in Europe, on the Mediterranean island 
of Pantellaria ; but they are almost exclusively confined to the insular and 
littoral districts of these regions. A very large proportion, probably 50 per 
cent., are entirely insular, while of those with a continental distribution only a 
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