Sir J. E. Surru's Remarks on the Bryum marginatum, &c. 291 
rect as far as it goes, not sufficient in such a difficult case to 
found any judgment upon. Bridel surely must have seen a 
specimen, or he would have prudently limited his assertion to 
the figure only. 
But it is on the subject of Mr. Dickson's Bryum marginatum 
that I now wish to defend him. This is indeed the serratum of 
the learned Schrader, communicated by that author to Gme- 
lin, who first published it in his edition of the Linnzan Systema 
Nature, vol. ii. part 2, 1330, under the name of Mnium serratum. 
Professor Schrader himself afterwards removes it to Bryum, in his 
Spicilegium, p. 71. Now the first part of Gmelin's second volume 
was not published till 1791, and the second part perhaps rather : 
later; nor did Schrader's Spicilegium come out till 1794. But 
Mr. Dickson's second fasciculus, where his B. marginatum is de- 
scribed and figured, was published in 1790, so that the charge‘ 
against him falls to the ground ; and if we were disposed to 
throw any blame. on so great and so candid a man as the present 
Gottingen Professor, we might say that he ought not to have 
omitted, in his Spicilegium, a reference to a standard cryptogamic 
work, published four years before. 
Far be it from me, however, to insist on any such charges. 
My aim is only to justify my venerable friend, my master in this 
line of study ; a task I the more readily undertake, as he is 
doubtless better employed than in thinking on the subject. 
. Norwich, | J. E. SMITH. 
April 18, 1814. | 
VOL. XI» en XXIX. Some 
