228 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



introduced, four new plates being added, and the terminology being 

 somewhat improved. The book provides, in popular language, an 

 account of the main facts of the life-history of the Bryophytes and of 

 their various modes of reproduction. It treats of the collection, 

 examination, and preservation of specimens, of the best sort of apparatus 

 to use, and of the home-manufacture of apparatus. Explicit instructions 

 for the preparation of Microscope slides are given, and also hints for the 

 avoidance of the many pitfalls which beset the beginner. 



Introduction to British Liverworts.* — Sir Edward and Agnes Fry 

 have published a simplified account of the Hepaticse. Beginning with 

 a description of two typical forms, the thalloid Pellia epiphylla and the 

 foliose Diplophyllum albicans, they pass on to consider the four groups, 

 Kiccieae, Monocleaj, Anthoceroteae, Jungermanniae, indicating the main 

 points of their morphology and anatomy. They discuss the various 

 modes of reproduction which prevail among the hepatica?, giving two 

 tables in which are displayed a number of British Jungermannieae that 

 are characterized by the possession of unicellular and of multicellular 

 gemmaa respectively. The form of these gemmas and their place of 

 production on the plants are indicated. The concluding chapters are con- 

 cerned with odour, water supply, alternation of generations, classification, 

 distribution. 



British Mosses. — W. Ingham f reports on the work done by the 

 bryological section of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union during 1910 and 

 records the discovery of some score of interesting species or varieties of 

 mosses and hepatics in divers localities by sundry collectors. 



E. A. Richards J records the finding of Campylopus flexuosus var. 

 paradoxus at Helsby Hill in Cheshire. Strictly speaking, the plant is 

 intermediate between C. flexuosus and the var. paradoxus, showing that 

 the latter has rightly been reduced from specific rank. 



E. Armitage § publishes a note on some mosses which are new 

 records for the counties of Westmorland and Ayr. They were gathered 

 in Mardale and Riggindale in the former county, and at Craig Lure and 

 Balbeg in Ayrshire. 



New Scottish Mosses. j| — J. Stirton publishes descriptions of the 

 following six new species : two of them collected on Ben Lawers in 

 1855, Timmia scotica, Climacium epigseum ; two found near Fort 

 William in 1908, Orthotrichum prasinellum and 0. prsenubilum ; and 

 two from Arisaig, Plagiothecium ru/ovirescens and Hypnum deflectens. 

 The Climacium has close affinities to G. americanum, and leads to the 

 question why should plants, which are found on the higher altitudes of 

 Ben Lawers and scarcely anywhere else in Great Britain, show such 

 close relationships to those occurring near the eastern shores of the more 

 northern parts of North America — as, for instance, Mollia fragilis 

 (Drum.), Hypnum hispidulum (Brid.), Climacium epigseum, and several 

 lichens. 



* The Liverworts, British and Foreign. London : Witherby & Co. 1911, viii- 

 and 74 pp. (49 figs.). t Naturalist, No. G48 (1911) pp. 60-1. 



J Lancashire Naturalist, iii. (1910) p. 177. 

 § Journ. of Bot., xlix. (1911) p. 36. 

 || Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., No. 76 (1910) pp. 238-44. 



