NEW SPECIES OF MUSCI. 67 



Stems loosely aggregated, pale green, flexuose. Leaves 

 crisped when dry, obliquely set, the base on one side of the 

 nerve prolonged and rotundate. Lid shorter than the cap- 

 sule. Teeth of the peristome unequally divided. The fertile 

 stem or pericheetium sending down its own rootlets. F. taxi- 

 folius, Hedw., may be distinguished by its greater size, its 

 leaves in from nine to fifteen pairs, more acute, by the peri- 

 chsetium growing truly on the cauline shoot, by the wider 

 capsules, and by the more elongated and attenuated beaks of 

 the lids. There is no annulus present. 



De Caricibusj by F. Boott, M.D. F.L.S. 



The following species of Carex form a natural group in 

 that vast genus, and have not been always clearly under- 

 stood. As in other groups, it is difficult to convey by 

 language that distinction which the eye perceives ; and in 

 many cases the transition of one species into another is so 

 evident, that no single character can be so expressed as to 

 suit, exclusively, any one species, seen under the various 

 forms which a large collection of specimens presents. 



To show the differences in the group Vesicarice, I have 

 given a table of the spikes, and of the male and female ones 

 from a large number of specimens examined in various her- 

 baria ; and it will be seen that it affords an additional 

 evidence of the specific character of some of the species allied 

 to each other, as in the case of the prevailing number of 

 female spikes in C. vesicaria and C. bullata, distinguishing 

 the one from C. ampullacea, and the other from C. Tucker- 

 muni. 



C. utriculata was first described in the Flora Bor. Ameri- 

 cana of Sir W. J. Hooker, and though common in the 

 United States, has not been admitted by Tuckerman in his 

 Enumeratio methodica Caricum, published in 1843. It has been 

 generally considered by American Botanists as C. ampullacea, 

 to which in its smaller forms it is closely allied, but from which, 

 in well developed specimens, it is distinct, especially by the 

 oblong elliptic perigynium, and the long hispid aristate lower 



