INTRODUCTION. 



PREVIOUS to the time when Gronlund made botanical collections 

 in Iceland (1868 and 1876) the Bryophyta of the island was 

 very little known. Earlier botanists, who occasionally collected speci- 

 mens also of the Bryophyte Vegetation, have only exceptionally given 

 information as regards localities, and the older lists consist merely of 

 an enumeration of species without any information as regards dis- 

 tribution or frequency. To this must be added that the older deter- 

 minations of species are very uncertain, and in many cases un- 

 doubtedly erroneous or quite improbable, and that the lists are 

 compiled quite uncritically without stating the name of the collector 

 or the source of the information. For instance, more than half of 

 the 149 mosses and 54 hepatics enumerated in Lindsay's list are 

 undoubtedly wrongly determined, and the majority of them beyond 

 doubt do not occur in Iceland. Therefore, in preparing the following 

 list of the Bryophyta- of Iceland, older records have been taken 

 into consideration only when it has been possible to verify them 

 by means of specimens in the collections. 



The material dating from older collections (previous to Gron- 

 lund's) is but very scanty. Morch was the first to contribute 

 anything of importance to our knowledge of the Bryophyta of 

 Iceland. In 1820 he collected a rather considerable number of 

 species, among which are many that were not found again until 

 quite recently, and even several which have not since been found 

 by others. Morch's collections are in the Botanical Museum in 

 Copenhagen, but unfortunately he has in only quite a few r cases 

 recorded the habitat on the wrappers. W. J. Hooker (1809), 

 Lindsay (1860) and Car oil (1861) collected mosses and hepatics 

 in Iceland, but as mentioned above, Lindsay's list,- in which 



