550 MB. W. MITTEN ON ETTBOPEAN AND NOETH-AMEEICAN 



Fig. 10. Is a fertilized flower, opened by me, and coloured, showing the pollinia 

 in situ ; haying become swollen, they have emitted their tubes down 

 the stigmatic canal. 



11. Is a natural-size sketch of a portion of the flower-stalk. 



Goody era procera. 



12. Eepresents a fertilized flower with the pollinia-caudicles seen through 

 the slit in the rostellum. 



13. Shows a flower in which the anther-cap and pollinia have been removed 

 and in which the stigmatic fluid had swollen up as high as a. 



14. The pollinia lifted out of the anther, and shown attached by the tips of 

 the caudicles to the top of the rostellum. 



Notes on the European and North- American Species of Mosses 

 of the Genus Fissidens. By William Mitmn, A.L.S. 



[Read 19th February, 1885.] 



The recent issue of two important works renders it possible to 

 take a survey of all the Mosses included in the genus Fissidens 

 which have been found in Europe and North America. In the 

 first, Dr. Braithwaite's ' British Moss Elora,' nearly all the 

 European species are clearly described and nicely figured. In 

 the latter, the ' Manual of North- American Mosses,' by Les- 

 quereux and James, all the species yet discovered in that region 

 are admirably described in a free and independent manner, devoid 

 of technicalities. In both these works the same sources are 

 quoted, and references made as have been generally acquiesced 

 in since the era of the publication of the ' Bryologia Europea. 

 These mosses present some remarkable features. In the form of 

 the leaf alone they are immediately distinguished from all others, 

 the foliaceous expansion in two planes, vertical and horizontal, 

 having no analogy to that of the Polytrichoid mosses, where leaf- 

 expansion is in many planes ; but is nearest approached by the 

 species of Hepatic® included in Gottschea and Micropterygiwm, 

 in which the presence of an amphigastrium or stipule shows 

 that the unusual form is independent of it as well as of the 

 nerve, which last indeed is absent in some true Fissidentes like 

 F. hyalinus. Many of the small species have been supposed to 

 be of annual duration ; but if favourable specimens are examined, 



