1 8 The Irish Nahwalist, Janiiarj', 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF BRITISH MOSSES. 



A Census Catalogrue of British lYIosses, with List of the 

 Botanical Vice-Couuties and their boundaries, and Lists of Sources 

 of Records, compiled under the direction of the Moss Exchange Club 

 by:— England— Professor Barker and W. Ingham, B.A. ; Wales— 

 D. A. Jones, F.L.S. ; Scotland— R. H. Mei<duum ; Ireland— Rev. C. 

 H. Waddei,!,, M.A., B.D., and Canon LETT, M.A., M.R.I.A. ; Channel 

 Islands— E. D. Marouand, A.L.S. 8vo. 64 pp. York: Coultas 

 and Volans, 1907. Price \s. 6d., or 2s. interleaved. 



The study of our native mosses will be much furthered by this publica- 

 tion, which, by showing the distribution in the British Islands, as known 

 up to last year, of every species and variety, renders available at a glance 

 a mass of information previously to be obtained only after laborious 

 search, and a further mass of distributional facts hitherto unpublished. 

 Considering that the project of producing such a census was first mooted 

 only in Jul}-, 1906, the Committee who carried it out are to be congratu- 

 lated on the promptness of the appearance of the catalogue, which 

 involved a vast amount of labour. For not only have all reliable existing 

 records been utilized, whether published or unpublished, but a consider- 

 able amount of special collecting has been carried out in the less known 

 districts, for the filling up of obvious gaps. Considering the number of 

 workers who have been busy since the last (2nd) edition of the ''London 

 Catalogue of British Mosses "was published in 1881, and the forward 

 movement made during the intervening quarter-century in the critical 

 knowledge of the group, it may be imagined what an advance in every 

 direction the present catalogue shows over its predecessor. For the 

 purpose of the census, Watson's 112 vice-counties have been adopted as 

 regards Great Britain, and Praeger's 40 division as regards Ireland. We 

 are sorry that the editors have retained the illogical and scientificall}^ 

 indefensible trick of bracketing the French islands of Guernsey and 

 Jersey with the natural biological province formed by Great Britain and 

 Ireland. The catalogue is prefaced with lists of the botanical divisions 

 before mentioned, and of the published and unpublished sources from 

 which records were derived. In the census itself, the arrangement of 

 the mosses follows Dickson's "Handbook," each name being followed 

 by a list of the numbers which correspond to the botanical divisions — 

 the Channel Islands appearing between the Scottish and the Irish 

 numbers! Round and square brackets distinguish the more or less 

 doubtful records. The "Census Catalogue" is a model of neatness and 

 conciseness, and makes one wish that equally accessible and complete 

 lists were available for other sections of our Britannic flora, 



R. LI. P. 



