8o 



E. G. Britton : A new TERriARV fossil Moss 



Br. & Sch., but differing from that species in its more flattened, 

 less crowded leaves and more slender stems. The species of 

 Rhynchostegium are rock mosses with creeping, rooting stems, 

 often stoloniferous and bearing the leaves flattened, ovate or lance- 

 olate and in several species blunt or rounded at apex. The vem 

 Is sinMe and extends from one half to three fourths the length of 



the leaf and the base is cither narrow or somewhat decurrcnt. 

 This fossil species has therefore all the essential characters of the 

 genus, though differing somewhat from all living species. 



Dr. IloUick has supplied the follow^ing notes : 

 flosses as fossils are exceedingly rare and as far 

 as I am aware, all the species thus far recorded, 

 with one exception are barren. They are almost 

 confined to the Tertiary and later rocks, although 

 Hecr supposed that mosses must have been pres- 

 ent in the Jurassic period, on account of the pres- 

 ence, in rocks of the Liassic epoch, of the insect 

 genus Byrrhidinm, whose living representatives 

 feed upon mosses (rrimcval World of Switzer- 

 land, English edition, Vol. 1., p. 89) ; and Renault 

 and Zeillcr have described, and provisionally re- 

 ferred to the mosses, certain remains from the 

 coal measures of Commentry (Comp. Rend. 

 Acad. Sci. Paris, 100 : 660. 1S85). Their pres- 

 ence as early as the Carboniferous period is cer- 

 tainly to be expected, as the rterido]Dhyta and 

 even the Gymnospermae had appeared upon the 

 scene prior to that time, and their absence from 



the palaeontological record is probably to be 

 accounted for by reason of their insignificant size 

 and the difficulty of their preservation. Fossil 



formerly all included under the 

 genus .^//..r/toBrong. and under this genus Unger enumerates nine 

 species. (Genera et Species Plantarum Fossilium, 41, 42- i35o). 

 Schimper in his Traite de Pale>ontologie Vegetale, Vol. I., pub- 

 lished in 1869, enumerates about thirty species and includes them 

 all, with the exception of three, in living genera and in some cases 



mosses were 



refers them to living species 



A number have been discovered 



