A CONTRIBUTION TO THE FLORA OF THE COUNTY. 205 



been carefully searched. Epping Forest, the district immediately 

 round Chelmsford, the neighbourhoods of Witham, Kelvedon 

 and Saffron Walden are the only parts at all thoroughly 

 explored so far, and even in these some as yet unrecorded 

 species, and especially varieties, will no doubt be discovered. 

 The whole of the eastern coast district in the broadest sense, the 

 Roothings, a large part of North Essex, and the whole of the 

 south from Shoebury to Grays and Purfleet, in which district as 

 the chalk crops up several unrecorded or rare species should be 

 found, have yet to be carefully searched; it is theiefore plain 

 that in this direction much remains to be done. 



2. The lack of diversity in the soils of Essex is another 

 point of importance, and this, together with the low elevation of 

 the whole of the county, has had a marked effect in lessening the 

 number of species likely to be found, and is a very real cause of 

 a poor Moss Flora. 



3. The small rainfall of the county is another real cause not 

 only of a lack of luxuriousness in the growth of the species 

 occurring, but also probably of a smaller number of species being 

 met with than in the west of the country. The arboreal species 

 especially are poorly represented ; the trees upon which they 

 usually grow are present, but it is seldom that one finds a moss- 

 grown tree, especially in the neighbourhood of London. This 

 may be due in part to the large amount of acid brought down by 

 the rain in many parts of the county, as Mr. Dymond has pointed 

 out in his paper on " Sulphate of Lime in Essex Soils and 

 Subsoils " (Essex Naturalist, xiv., p. 62). 



The fruiting of mosses as a general rule appears to be most 

 abundant where the vegetative development is greatest, and we 

 find, as a rule, much less production of fruit by mosses in Essex 

 than we notice in the moister western parts of the country, where 

 the vegetative growth is more luxuriant. In this connection it 

 is worth noting that a considerable number of those mosses that 

 fail to produce fruit, or that fruit but seldom, frequently form 

 numerous small buds or gemmae, which are capable of reproduc- 

 ing the plant, as we see in Teiraphis pellucida, Tovtula papulosa and 

 T. mutica (the leaves of which, like the last, are frequently covered 

 with numerous round gemmae), Orthotrichum lyellii, Aulacomnium 

 androgynuui, and to a less extent A. palustre, or even reproducing 

 themselves by a piece of leaf which breaks off, as in Campylopus 



