189 
eyes to-day? Dr. Gray and Dr. Hooker have left many prob- 
lems of distribution for us younger ones to puzzle over. 
A look to the future shows us that many fossil treasures are 
in this retreat of the ice slowly coming to light again. To those 
already found we owe much that we know of the history of the 
tertiary period, but that history will surely be rendered more 
vivid if a few generations of note-taking botanists study on their 
own ground the rapidity with which vegetation follows the re- 
treating glaciers, and learn the order of its march. 
Alaska will give us object lessons, if we will but heed them, 
and no more interesting or accessible field presents itself to Amer- 
ican botanists. 
Leucobryum minus, Hampe. 
Through the kindness of Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Gepp of 
the British Natural History Museum, I have been able to see 
the type of this species, which has been variously confounded 
with L. albidum (Brid ) Lindb. by European authors, including 
Braithwaite in his supplement to the British Moss-Flora, p. 295, 
and Limpricht in Rabenhorst’s Kryptogamen Flora, iv., 421. 
Authentic specimens, compared with the type, were sent to Dr? 
Braithwaite, and he admitts that all the synonymy on page 296 
l. ¢., except the last line, should be omitted. Mr. Kern also 
kindly sent a specimen of his Lago Maggiore collection, men- 
tioned by Limpricht, 1. c., and this also proves to be not our Z. 
minus, Hampe, but the species known as L. albidum (Brid.) 
Lindb, Hampe’s specimen was collected in “lignis putridis, ad 
flume Savannah, Ga.,” by Beyrich, and is the characteristic moss 
of our Southern States, distributed by Sullivant in his Musct 
Alleghaniensis, No. 169, as Dicranum glaucum, vat. albidum, 
Brid. from Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana ; also by Austin in 
his Musci Appalachiani, 477, as “ZL. vulgare, vat. minus, 
(Z. minus, Hampe) from the Southern States, common ;” but 
the reference to Sullivant Mosses U. S., page 24, is “or 
Sullivant referred to the smaller of the Northern States species, 
which has been separated from Z. g/aucum (L.), and which is 
identical with the European specimens described by Braithwaite 
and Limpricht. Sullivant and Lesquereux are partly 1 esponsible 
