8o The Irish Naturalist. [March, 



NOTES. 



We have pleasure in drawing attention to the excellent plate which 

 accompanies Mr, Wright's paper in the present number. The half-tone 

 block from which it is printed was presented to the Irish Nattwalist by 

 the makers, Messrs. W. and G. Baird, of Belfast, who have recently set 

 up the most complete installation of process-block machinery to be 

 found in Ireland. The excellence of their work is sufficiently shown by 

 their reproduction of Mr. Welch's drawing. 



BOTANY. 



MOSSES. 



Sphag^nutYi tnedlutn, Liinpr'., In Ireland. 



In \.\i^ Jounml of Botany for January, 1900, Mr. Harold W. Mornington 

 describes and figures Sphagniini viediuni, Limpr., which he says, "has 

 been frequently gathered and is generally distributed throughout 

 these islands. It has been long known as the purple form of S. cymbi- 

 folium, the var. purpurasans of Russou, but the identity of which with 

 vS". medium appears to have hitherto escaped notice. The first record 

 seems to be that from Witherslack Moss, Westmoreland, specimens 

 from which, gathered by Barnes in 1872, were issued in Braithwaite's 

 Sphagn. Brit. Exsicc. as S. cymbifolium var. purpiirascens, Russ. To Mr. 

 Stabler belongs the credit of first recognizing S. medium as a British 

 species, it being included in his ' Hepaticie and Musci of Westmoreland ' 

 {Naturalist, 1898, 124)." 



In August, 1899, [ had the pleasure of a tramp on Foulshaw Moss 

 between Kendal and Morecambe Bay, in Westmoreland, in company 

 with Mr. Stabler and the Rev. C. H. Waddell, when the former pointed 

 out S. mediiun growing among the heather. Foulshaw is a wide peat 

 moss, reminding one very much of the Bog of Allan, 



Up to that time I had no knowledge of 5. medium, and was not aw^are 

 that a moss which I had gathered on the margin of the Bog of Allan, at 

 Geashill, King's Count}-, in 1890, and had named S. papillosum var. 

 eonfertum, was actually S. medium, but so Mr. Mornington, who has a 

 portion of m}- specimen, states in his paper from which I am quoting. 



The locality where I gathered S. medium is the same as that in which 

 I found S. Austiniy another very rare moss. Both these plants should 

 be looked for in other places in Ireland, and their discovery ought to 

 incite byologists to search some of our extensive bogs. 



S. medium resembles in size, habit, and general appearance S. cymbi/olium, 

 " but with the tufts variegated, dappled with green and red to violet- 

 purple. It varies to some extent in the arrangement of the branch- 

 leaves, but preserves in nearly all cases a facies by which it can be 

 readily detected." 



The crucial point which Mr. Mornington describes and illustrates by 

 drawings, is that " the chlorophyllose cells in cross section are small, 

 elliptical, central and completely enclosed on both sides by the biplane 

 hyaline cells," which is not the case in the leaf*structure of any other 

 Sphagnum. 



