— 9— 

 lid adheres to it and is raised upon it, as in 



Fig. 37- 



Consir/cied, used of capsules that become nar- 

 rowed under the mouth when dry. (Fig. 32.) 



Contracted, see constricted. 



INJURY DONE TO MOSSES BY INSECTS. 



By G. N. Best. 



MOSSES furnish an excellent harbor for insects which in turn 

 feed upon, mutilate and destroy them. From a diagnostic 

 standpoint the injury they inflict is of importance since it 

 modifies to a considerable extent the normal characters. When 

 mosses are seriously injured, they show it in their short, stubby 

 branches and in their withered, shrunken, often contorted and dis. 

 colored leaves. The stems are the parts most commonly attacked. 

 On these appear minute reddish-brown spots or nodules, usually 

 with a central perforation, around which the tissues are necrosed and 

 thickened. These spots not rarely coalesce to form patches, gird- 

 ling the stem in such a way as to interfere with its nutrition. 

 Less often the midribs, the pedicels and the capsules are attacked 

 in the same manner. A common seat of injury is about the base 

 of the capsule which then rarely attains a normal development, 

 the peristome suffering most. When the stems are affected the 

 areolation of the leaves is often quite abnormal, the basal and 

 alar cells especially. Sometimes the cells of one-half of a leaf dif- 

 fer from those of the other half. In fact these deformities not 

 rarely so obscure the normal characters, as to give grounds for a 

 suspicion that a new species is at hand ; and it is quite probable 

 that not a few species owe their existence more to insects than to 

 nature. 



NEW AMERICAN MOSSES. 



Grimmia Evansi E. G. Britton. Rhodora 1 : 148, \%^^, pi. 7, 

 "Plants forming low, dense, dirty tufts of a dark green or 

 yellowish brown color, only the uppermost ends of the branches 

 being green and free from gravel. Stems about 15mm. high, 

 with short fastigiate branches 5mm. long, naked and radiculose 

 below, crowded above with spreading leaves which are about 

 imm. long by o. 5-0. ymm broad, oblong, concave, acute or api- 

 culate with inrolled margins above, forming a more or less 



