2 CENSUS MUSCORUM AUSTRALIENSIUM, 



had not been printed when, about 1898, I first made Mr. 

 Whitelegge's acquaintance. It was embodied, under a different 

 classification, in our conjoint Catalogue which, containing upwards 

 of 500 species, was accepted for publication in March, 1900, by 

 this Society. 



My own ambition had been to prepare, in the course of a few 

 years, a Catalogue of the Mosses of Australia and Tasmania, 

 towards which I had been steadily accumulating material. It 

 soon became evident, however, that it would be impossible to get 

 such a w^ork printed by the Society in addition to the New South 

 Wales Catalogue; and the Council kindl}' allowed us to withdraw 

 the earlier work and substitute a Census of Australian Mosses, 

 so far, at any rate, as the species usually called Acrocarps were 

 concerned. 



My colleague's pre-occupations in the Australian Museum 

 having prevented him from taking an active part in this larger 

 work, the responsibility for the collation and classification of the 

 material falls upon my shoulders alone. 



It ca.nnot, unfortunately, be claimed that there are no synonyms, 

 nor nomina nuda, in this Census. The inaccessibility of speci- 

 mens, and even, in some cases, of descriptions, the differing 

 principles of determination ado^Dted by specialists, and the large 

 number of new species of which we know nothing except the 

 names, make an unchallengeable list of Australian Mosses imprac- 

 ticable at the present stage. 



To illustrate one of our many perplexities. Mitten and Wilson 

 introduced an excessive number of European and Antarctic names 

 into our Moss Flora. Dr. Carl Mueller, on the other hand, 

 regarded all our species as endemic, so much so that, with him, 

 our Ficnaria hygrometrica was F. sphaerocarpa, our forms of 

 Bryum argenteum became Br. Bateanum and Br. HamjyeanKm, and 

 even our Ceratodon purimreus w^as only recognised by him as var. 

 australis. Dr. Brotherus, in his ' Bryales,' now in course of 

 publication, goes a long wa}'^ in the direction of Dr. Mueller's 

 views, but by no means regards all our species as endemic. 



