PHYTOLOGY. 



aLEN TILT: ITS FAUNA AND TLOEA. 

 By F. BUCHANAN WHITE, M.D. F.L.S. 



( Coiitimied from vol. iv. page 304. ) 



THE CRYPTOGAMIC FLORA. 



TO compile a tolerably perfect list of the flowering plants 

 of a district, a few well-planned visits of not more than 

 four or five' days each is all that is absolutely necessary, but it is 

 far otherwise with the cryptogamic flora. To become acquainted 

 with the mosses and liverworts, the fungi and lichens, the desmids 

 and diatoms, the botanist must spend summer and winter, spring 

 and autumn, in continued search. Nor will one year be sufficient 

 for his purpose : a lifetime is scarcely enough. Year after year 

 may be spent in examining a single copse or plantation ; each 

 square foot of ground may have been repeatedly gone over; and 

 when the patient searcher has almost made up his mind that 

 there is nothing left for him to discover, lo ! some fine morning 

 he beholds the well-known ground covered with a beautiful agaric 

 that has never gladdened his eyes before, and which may not be 

 seen again till after the lapse of a human generation. And so it 

 may happen with the other grou])s. Not that they are so uncer- 

 tain in their times of appearances as the fungi, but many are so 

 minute and so restricted in their localities, as well as variable in 

 quantity, that species may elude observation year after year. 

 Therefore, until that happy time, when Glen Tilt possesses 

 resident botanists qualified to reveal its hidden treasures, the 

 cryptogamic flora must remain comparatively, though, thanks to 

 various explorers, not absolutely unknown. 



