152 
After comparing carefully the forms with obtuse calyx-lobes 
from Chili and Peru, collected in the Andes by Bridges, he 
makes a new species, S. Bridgesii, and also decides that those 
from the Argentine Republic are not S. tuberosum. 
He says that our native species from New Mexico and Ari- 
zona, which Dr. Gray has called S. Fendleri, and S. tuberosum 
boreale, resemble more closely S. verrucosum, Schlecht., and _ 
holds that S. ¢wberosum and S. Maglia are specifically identical, 
that the differences which separate the tuberose species are very 
slight, and that they diminish with the increase of hybridiza- 
tion. The paper concludes with specific descriptions of S. 
Bridgesii, n.s.; S. tuberosum, L., var. Chiloense, var. cultum, 
var. Sabini, var. Maglia, and S. Mandont. 
Schimper's Microspores of Sphagna.—In Hedwigia, Vol. xxv., 
pp. 89-92, C. Warnstorf calls attention to Schimper’s statement 
in 1858 (Entwickelungsgeschicte der Torfmoose, p. 31) that two 
kinds of spores exist in the Sphagna, one kind being large, tetra- 
hedral (macrospores), the other smaller and spherical-polyhedral 
(microspores) and that they may be found in separate capsules— 
in which case the microspores occur in smaller capsules than the 
macrospores—or both forms together in the same capsule. Herr 
Warnstorf has succeeded in finding both kinds in separate cap- 
sules of S. acutiforme, vars. robustum and tenellum, and S. acuti- 
folium, var. luridum,and both together in the capsules of S. 
Girgensohnit. The microspores are about one-half the diameter 
of the macrospores, and hence about one-quarter their volume. 
Schimper remarks that they result from the continued division of 
mother-cells into sixteen segments, the macrospores being pro- 
duced by their division into four. Their function is unknown. - 
This corroboration of Prof. Schimper’s discovery is of great in- 
_ terest and importance, indicating the higher position of the Bog 
Mosses in the Vegetable kingdom, as compared with other Bryo- ~ 
phytes, and agreeing in this respect with the greater complexity 
of their tissues, suggesting indeed, certain relationship to the 
heterosporous Pteridophyta. Herr Warnstorf’s researches open 
a field of inquiry which should be followed up in this country, 
_ and we commend it to the attention of American Bryologists. 
