342 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Xerophytic Mosses of the Limestone around Odessa.* — A. A. 

 Sapehin regards the cushion-shaped tufts of mosses as an adaptation to 

 the conditions of life in dry places, the cushions being permeated with 

 capillary passages which enable the colony to absorb every drop of water 

 that falls upon the tuft. Tortuous capillary passages are produced by 

 the appression of the leaves against the stem when either dry or moist ; 

 and the leaves often imbricate over one another. In great drought the 

 apical leaves die, turn brown, and so protect the leaves beneath them. 

 The hairs and papilla? of the leaf -surface serve to disperse the sun's rays 

 that strike the plant. 



Spanish Species of Marchantia.f — A. Casares Gil writes of the 

 differences between the two native Spanish species of Marchantia, 

 M. polymorpha, and M. paleacea ; and shows how they may be distin- 

 guished even in the barren state, especially by the shape of the inner 

 opening of the barrel-shaped stomata. In the former species this inner 

 opening is quadrate (porus internus quadratus), whereas in M. paleacea 

 the inner opening is cruciate (porus internus cruciatus). These differ- 

 ences are shown by figures. 



New Madeiran Moss-genus, Tetrastichium. :£ — J. Cardot gives the 

 history of Lepidopilum fontanum Mitt., a moss which occurs in Madeira, 

 the Azores, and the Canaries, but has hitherto been known in the sterile 

 state only. Mitten, in describing it in 1863, established for it the sub- 

 genus Tetrastichium, but subsequently employed that name in different 

 sense for a group of South American mosses (Crossomitrium of C. 

 Midler). Cardot having now had the opportunity of examining a 

 Teneriffe specimen of L. fontanum with a single old deoperculate 

 capsule, which is horizontal, short, asymmetrical, inflated below, shows 

 that the plant belongs to neither Lepidopilum nor Crossomitrium, but 

 has more affinity with Hookeria lucens. He therefore designates it as 

 Tetrastichium fontanum, the representative of a new genus. It is not 

 closely allied to Lepidopilum virens Card., an Azores species with 

 8-ranked leaves, which probably is a true Lepidopilum. Tetrastichium 

 is the second endemic moss-genus recorded for the Atlantic Islands, the 

 other being Alophosia Card., a Polytrichaceous genus. 



North American Muscineae. — E. G. Britton § publishes notes on 

 nomenclature, and calls attention to Hypopterygium canadense Kindb., 

 a member of a tropical or subtropical genus which does not occur north 

 of Mexico and Cuba, except in case of the above species, which grows 

 in Queen Charlotte Island, British Columbia. This is an anomalous 

 instance of distribution of a tropical genus, which finds its parallel in 

 the occurrence of Hookeria laetevirens at Killarney. A. J. Grout || 

 enumerates 133 mosses collected in the mountains of western North 

 Carolina in the summer of 1907. H. X. Dixon's paperlf on Nematode 



* Bull. Jard. Imp. Sci. St. Petersbourg, vii. (1907) pp. 81-4 (figs.). 

 t Boletin R. Soc. Espanola Hist. Nat., viii. (1908) pp. 107-112 (figs.). 

 % Rev. Bryolog., xxxv. (1908) pp. 6-7. 



§ Bryologist, xi. (1908) pp. 24-5. || Tom. cit., pp. 25-30. 



T Tom. cit., p. 31. 



