ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 199 



Trichostomum mutabile Br. and its Allies.* — Th. Herzog has made 

 a thorough study of the variable species T. mutabile and all the supposed 

 allied species and varieties. He has had more than 250 specimens 

 through his hands, and he is therefore able to form a broad and just 

 view of the mutability of the species. As a result, he sinks T. Morale 

 Mitt., T. cuspidatum ttchimp., and T. lutescens (Lindb.), and disposes of 

 many varieties, taking as the name for this collective species T. mutabile 

 Br. Unfortunately, the forms are so numerous that the author finds it 

 impossible to point out a really fixed type to serve as a true variety of 

 T. mutabile, in the ordinary sense ; and he has, therefore, set up what 

 he calls " ideal types " as indicating the main lines of divergence. These 

 are founded on forms more or less easily diagnosed and distinct from 

 each other : densum, Morale, mutabile, and cuspidatum. The inter- 

 mediate forms are designated by a special system of nomenclature, 

 explained by the author. He then treats of difference in growth, the 

 foliage-characters, leaf-form, and anatomy, form of the capsule, size and 

 variety of structure of the peristome. Finally, the author describes 

 fully the types and sub-types, giving full geographical distribution of 

 each, followed by a chapter on phylogenetic conclusions and a diagram 

 of form-affinities. 



Muscinese of Crete.f — W. E. Nicholson publishes a list of 91 mosses 

 and 13 hepaticas collected by him during a fortnight's stay in the island 

 of Crete. The sun was already beginning to dry up the vegetation, 

 which added to the difficulty of the collector. The region examined was 

 in the neighbourhood of Kandia, in which the most productive locality 

 was the bed of the Kairatos and the adjacent ravines close to the recent 

 excavations of Knossos. The author also crossed the island, and was 

 thus enabled to gain a fairly good general idea of the moss flora. He 

 finds the mosses of the subalpine zone, which are so rich in Central 

 Europe, to be poorly represented in Crete. There was no species of 

 Dicranum, Rhacomitrium or Hylocomium, and the genus Hypnum was 

 represented by H. mpressiforme only. A cave on Mount Ida, at a height 

 of 5000 ft., was thickly hung with mosses, among which Neckera turgida 

 predominated. The author points out that many localities remain 

 unexplored, which offer an interesting field for work. 



New Greenhouse Fissidens.J — A. A. Elenkin describes and figures 

 Fissidens Waldheimii, a new species of moss which grows abundantly on 

 the trunks of Dicksonia antarctica in the glasshouses of the Imperial 

 Botanic Garden of St. Petersburg. It was associated with Pt&rygophyllum 

 hepaticcefolium and Rhacopilum convolutaceum. This Fissidens fruits in 

 winter, and much resembles F. adiantoides, but the leaves lack the 

 hyaline margin of that species, the spores are verruculose, and the stems 

 are rufescent below with radicles almost to the apex. 



Hybrids of Physcomitrella.§ — I. Gyorffy has investigated the com- 

 parative anatomy of Physcomitrella patens, P. Hampei, Physcomitrium 



* Nova Acta Acad. Cses. Leop. -Carol., lxxiii. (1907) pp. 451-81 (7 pis.). 

 t Rev. Bryolog., xxxiv. (1907) pp. 81-6. 



\ Bull. Jard. Imp. Bot. St. Petersbourg, vii. (1907) pp. 1-8 (2 pis.). 

 § Hedwigia, xlvii. (1907) pp. 1-59 (figs.). 



