272 EVANS. 



were very distinct from the true M. pubesccns of the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere and that they represented an undescribed species. To this 

 he gave the name M. frontipilis. He showed further that some of 

 Hooker's specimens of "./. furcata" were distinct from the northern 

 M. furcata and referred them to his new M . hamata, a species having 

 a wide distribution in tropical and temperate regions. He made no 

 definite allusion to Hooker's other specimens of "J. furcata" or to 

 Gay's specimens of "M. furcata" but stated explicitly that he had 

 seen no material of the true M . furcata from the American continent. 



In 1885 Massalongo (11) issued his report on the Hepaticae collected 

 by Spegazzini in the Fuegian region and recorded new localities for 

 both M. frontipilis and M. hamata. He likewise restored M. furcata to 

 a place in the flora, on the basis of sterile material from Basket Island, 

 and described a new variety of this species from Staten Island under 

 the name (3. decipiens. This variety was said to be intermediate 

 between the true M. furcata and M. hamata, and it was suggested that 

 it might represent an undescribed species. In 1889 Bescherelle and 

 Massalongo (2, pp. 246, 247) listed M. frontipilis, M. furcata var. 

 decipiens, and M. hamata from numerous additional localities in Tierra 

 del Fuego, the Straits of Magellan and southern Patagonia, basing 

 their records on material collected by Savatier, Hariot, and other 

 members of the French Scientific Expedition to Cape Horn. In the 

 following year Schiffner (16), in his account of the Hepaticae collected 

 by Naumann of the " Gazelle " Expedition, raised the var. decipiens 

 to specific rank, under the name M. decipiens (Massal.) SchifTn. & 

 Gottsche, and proposed M. magellanica Schiffn. & Gottsche as a new 

 species. Both of these were found at Tuesday Bay in the Straits of 

 Magellan. In addition he reported M. frontipilis and " M. linearis 

 (Sw.) Lindb." from the same locality and also from Punta Arenas. 

 The "M. linearis," however, is not the same as the West Indian M. 

 linearis (Sw.) Aust. but is merely a synonym of M. hamata, as Lind- 

 berg had already shown in his Monographia. 



No additional species were reported from the region until 1899, 

 when Stephani published a monograph of Metzgcria in the first volume 

 of his Species Hepaticarum (19). In this important contribution he 

 recognized M. frontipilis, M. furcata, and M. hamata as members of 

 the flora but reduced M. magellanica to synonymy under M . nitida 

 Mitt. (12, p. 243), a species based on Australian and New Zealand 

 material, and expressed the opinion that M. decipiens probably repre- 

 sented another synonym of the same species. A third species that he 

 included among the synonyms of M. nitida was his own M. australis 





