MOSSES FROM CHINA AND JAPAN. 465 
Other species, at present occurring only inJapan and America, 
may have previously existed in a connecting belt of laud, now 
represented by the Kurile Isles, Kamtchatka, and the Aleutian 
Isles. 
The generic position of Oligotrichum Lescurii still remains, 
perhaps, a little doubtful. James in referring it to Atrichum, 
remarked :—“The capsule is very short, ovate, with a wide 
mouth; the peristome and operculum wanting; a loose calyptra 
of the genus was found." Mitten (8) says “ The capsule is, when 
empty, turbinate; the calyptra is small, smooth and shining. 1t 
has no resemblance to any species of Atrichum.” The leaves are 
remarkable in possessing a few, long, narrow flexuose cilia, some- 
times composed of as many as ten cells, on either side at the 
shoulder of the sheathing base, and also for the bistratose lamina 
with mamillate cells (see Pl. 17. fig. 20). This type of leaf is 
anomalous for botb Atrichum and Oligotrichum, and is most nearly 
approached in certain species of Polytrichum, from which genus, 
however, the glabrous calyptra and the position aud structure 
of the lamelle separate the present plant. 
EnPonIACEF. 
VENTURIELLA SINENSIS, C. Müll.—(Erpodium sinense, Venturi, 
in Rabenh. Bryoth. Europ. no. 1211, 1873.) 
The moss described from Japan (on bark, ‘ Challenger’ Ex- 
pedition) by Mitten in 1886 (Journ. Linn. Soc. (Bot.) xxii. 314), 
as à peristomate species of Erpodium, under the name of E 
japonicum, is, I consider, the same as F. sinensis. Brotherus (22), 
however, speaking of Mitten’s plant as Venturiella japonica 
(Mitt.), says: * Species H. sinensi (Vent.) C. Müll. simillima, sed 
statura minore, peristomii dentibus Jatioribus pallidioribus 
sporisque minoribus dignoscenda.” I cannot find, however, any 
differenee in habit or in the peristome of the Chinese and the 
Japanese plant; in the specimens of the former which I have 
examined the spores measure 20-30 u, in the latter 20-28 p. 
It may be noted that Müller, in the diagnosis of the genus 
Venturiella given in his recent work on Chinese mosses (12), 
describes the peristome-teeth as “per paria approximata; ” 
although in this author's previous description, in * Linnea’ (10), 
the teeth are spoken of as “regular.” In boththe Chinese and 
Japanese examples that I have seen the 16 teeth are equidistant, 
as represented in Mitten's drawing (8. pl. li. figs. 19, 20). 
