400 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
is known where the guilty individuals were identified and justly pu- 
nished. We were about eighty miles to the north, and we passed by 
a place called Ca//iep, meaning the place of the Five; or Five Brothers. 
One of these men had accidentally been killed by the fall of a tree, and 
his four brothers went to the south to avenge his death, and murdered 
two young brothers or cousins, whom they watched till they were asleep. 
Their friends quickly mustered, followed, overtook and slew all the four 
assassins, whose land remains to this day without an owner. About 
twelve months ago I was travelling with Mr. Gilbert, and I discovered 
the skeleton of a native, the bones dragged hither and thither by the wild 
dogs. Our guide, Mangerroot, who also accompanied us in our recent 
journey to the east, told us that five years previously he and his friends 
were hunting damars in the thicket where I had found these relies, 
when they quarrelled, and a battle ensued, in which a friend of Man- 
gerroot’s was killed; but his party were eventually victors, and slew 
three of their opponents. After the fight was over, they buried their 
companion where he fell, but left the corpses of the enemies exposed to 
the wild beasts, and it was one of them which I had seen. 
Your kindness in sending me a microscope has enabled me to detect 
a little Moss, which has given me more pleasure than anything I have 
found since the days of my discovery of Hookeria lete-virens, near 
Cork, in Ireland. This minute Moss is not only beautiful in itself, 
but it affords what I conceive to be an admirable illustration of a sub- 
ject which it cost me much trouble to elucidate many years ago, namely, 
the germination of Mosses, their first and simplest form, in what I call 
the conferva state, and ultimately their development into what I term 
the foliaceous state, being that in which they produce capsules. I re- 
member transmitting to you, many years ago, the result of my expe- 
riments on the subject, but they appear hitherto to have been little 
regarded: Conferva velutina, though undoubtedly the young of Poly- 
trichum aloides, continues to figure in books as a good species; and I 
observe that Messrs. Bruch and Schimper, in their remarks on No. 10 
of my deceased brother’s * Musci Americani, seem to be puzzled with the 
conferva-like cotyledons belonging to the plant. But what are these 
cotyledons? simply the articulated filaments which compose the roots 
of Mosses, and which acquire a green colour by exposure to the light. 
I enclose specimens which illustrate the point. In No. 1 these jointed 
filaments are seen simple or branched, fringing the leaves of the peri- 
