i9oo] 171 



SOME MOSSES FROM NORTH-EAST IRELAND. 



BY J. H. DAVIKS. 



In the case of muscological botany it seems unsafe to say of 

 any large district that it has been so thoroughly explored that 

 nothing remains to reward the patient investigator. Many of 

 the mosses are so minute, and their distinguishing marks 

 such that they cannot well be recognized without micro- 

 scopical examination, they are liable to be overlooked or 

 mistaken. Even in areas that have been best searched by the 

 keenest-eyed and most experienced observers one need not 

 dCvSpair of meeting with something which has been previously 

 unnoticed. From time to time in the course of the last few 

 months, as my scant opportunities permitted^ I have found 

 pleasure in renewing and extending an old acquaintance with 

 these attractive plants, and have met with several species of 

 some rarity and with others that I had never before gathered. 

 A few brief extracts from my notes on some of those that have 

 come under observation, chiefly within a radius of about four 

 miles from Lisburn, and a few noticed between Kilroot and 

 Whitehead, on the County Antrim coast of Belfast Lough, may 

 not be unwelcome to those interested in our Irish moss-flora. 

 In addition to some of them being new to the north-eastern 

 district, the short list now supplied includes the names of 

 three species and two varieties which were not before known 

 as Irish plants. These are Torhila inarginata, Amblystegium 

 Jiiratzkamtm, and A. variuvi ; the var. acutifolia oi Barbula 

 tophacea, and the var. subglobosa of Weisia viridula. The 

 latter variety it would seem has not before been noted as 

 British. 



It will have been noticed that for several of the more 

 minute Fissidenics, which have a wide distribution in Britain, 

 the Irish stations so far recorded are singularly few. In the 

 absence of fructification the}^ are difficult to determine, and 

 even when in fruit may have been passed over without being 

 discriminated from the nearly allied and everywhere common 

 Fissideyis bryoides. But the bryological productions of many 

 parts of our island have been too much neglected. In Dr. 

 Moore's " Synopsis of tbe Mosses of Ireland" -(1872) only 



A3 



