BOOKS AND CURRENT LITERATURE 



The Mosses of New York. — Doctor Grout's Moss Flora of New 

 York City and Vicinity ^ is a valuable addition to the list of bryological 

 works now available for moss students in the northeastern and middle 

 Atlantic states: It is an attractive book of 119 pages, containing keys 

 to the families, genera, and species, descriptions of families and genera, 

 and interesting notes on the habitat and distribution of the various 

 species. At the back of the book are 12 plates, containing 20 half-tone 

 illustrations made from some of the excellent photographs for which the 

 author is noted. 



The area embraced in the book, or annotated list as it might be called, 

 includes all counties of New York and New Jersey lying adjacent to 

 the city, with localities outside of this area for rare or unusual species. 

 The author notes that he has for fifteen years "made a careful study in 

 the field, of the mosses of eastern Long Island and of Staten Island" 

 and he accordingly^ includes all available data for Long Island. The 

 area includes the region around Closter, New Jersey, so exhaustively 

 collected over by the late C. F. Austin, whose work is thus referred to 

 by Dr. Grout: 'Tn New Jersey the mosses of the north and those of the 

 south meet, and it seems to one who scans Austin's work with care that 

 he found there almost all the mosses of eastern North America." Dr. 

 Grout's list enumerates about 380 species and varieties, with notes on 

 a few other species, so that its range of usefulness is greater than its 

 title would indicate. 



A carefully prepared list such as this will always stimulate study in 

 the locality to which it pertains and, in any of the more densely settled 

 regions it will, to quote again from the author's preface, "put on scien- 

 tific record facts of natural history that will soon have vanished beyond 

 the possibility of record or recall." We hope to see other regions of 

 our country represented by lists of this character. 



Noting the peculiar lack of tree-growing mosses around New York 

 City the author is inclined to believe the cause to be gases produced 

 m the city. The reviewer is inclined to believe that, around industrial 

 cities at least, iron-ore dust, coal dust, etc., with associated products 

 such as sulphurous and sulphuric acids, may be of importance in pre- 



1 Grout, A. J. The Moss Flora of New York City and Vicinity. Pp. 119, 

 pis. 12. Published by the Author, New Dorp, N. Y., October 1916. 



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