ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, ETC. 731 



ments made by Arens. There are eight chromosomes of different 



lengths, and during the last division there is a two-fold chromosome- 

 reduction. Centrosomes are found and also an extra-nuclear mass of 

 chromatin, which ultimately disappears. 



Arctic Mosses.*— P. A. Rydberg gives a digest of the bryological 

 report of the second Norwegian arctic expedition in the ' Fram' (1898- 

 1902). The collection of mosses was very large and was determined by 

 N. Bryhn, B. Kaalaas, and E. Ryan. The number of specimens was 

 about 1700, and the material was very difficult to work up, owing to the 

 chauged and peculiar growth of the far arctic mosses. Most of them 

 are diminutive and congested into dense tufts, with thread-like innova- 

 tions and shortened leaves. They are often strongly coloured, yellow, 

 red, brown, or crimson. Very few produce fruit, and when they do 

 (as the bisexual species of Brtjum), the capsules are torn off by the 

 snow-bunting, which thereby obtains its principal food. Very few 

 species occur in pure tufts ; they are usually mixed, even as many as 

 twenty or thirty together in a tuft, and all indistinguishable save under 

 the Microscope. Specimens were gathered on the west coast of Green- 

 land, on Ellesmere Land, North Lincoln, King Oscar's Land, North 

 Devon, and North Kent— all of them localities in Smith's Sound or 

 Jones's Sound. Two hundred and ninety species were collected, and 

 among them are thirty-five new species and twenty-two new varieties. 

 The names and stations of the novelties are cited. 



North American Mosses. — J. F. Collins f gives an account of a 

 small packet of mosses collected in Caribou Bog in the Aroostook 

 County, Maine, by M. L. Fernald. It contained four pleurocarpous 

 mosses, a Spliagnum and an hepatic, all new to the State of Maine. 

 J. F. Collins^: publishes some additions . and corrections for insertion 

 in his tabulated distributional list of mosses of New England in 

 " Rhodora " two years ago. C. Warnstorf § describes Sphagnum Faxonii, 

 found seventeen years ago in Massachusetts by E. Faxon, part author 

 of the " Sphagna Boreali-Americana Exsiccata." The species is allied 

 to S. cuspidatum. H. H. Bartlett, || having borrowed the type of 

 Sphagnum Faxonii Warnst., has searched the Faxon herbarium and 

 found that the type-locality of the species is not Massachusetts but 

 Sunken Heath, Mount Desert Island, Maine, where it was collected by 

 Faxon and Rand (June 29, 1891). Examination of Rand's herbarium 

 affords the same evidence. In each case the plants are mixed with 

 Lophozia intiata. E. G. Britton % gives some notes upon Zygodon. 

 Z. viridissimus is a rare species in the United States ; it is usually 

 sterile, and is propagated by means of septate brood-bodies, borne in 

 clusters in the axils of the leaves. Fruiting specimens, discovered in 

 Virginia, reveal an absence of peristome. Specimens collected by 

 Drummond near Hudson Bay belong to Z. rupestris, regarded in 

 Europe either as a species or as a variety of Z. viridissimus. Z. gracilis 



* Brvologist, xi. (1908) pp. 77-S3. 



t Rhodora, x. (1908) pp. 37-8. J Tom. cit., pp. 71-2. 



§ Tom. cit., pp. 40-2. Tom. cit., pp. 113-1 1. 



If Torreva, viii. (1U08) p. 17:2. 



3 c 2 



