IRojjal jftt!3titution of dS^xtat ISxitairt. 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, January 23, 1891. 



Sir Frederick Bramwell, Bart. D.C.L, F.E.S. Honorary Secretary 

 and Vice President, in the Chair. 



The Right Hon. Sir Edward Fry, Lord Justice of Appeal, 

 F.E.S. F.S.A. F.L.S. M.BJ. 



British Mosses. 



(Abstract.) 



I CANNOT without an apology address the Royal Institution on this 

 subject. I can make no pretence to speak with authority ; I speak 

 only as a learner who has devoted to the subject some leisure from 

 amidst avocations of a very different kind. But the pleasure I have 

 derived from the study, the sense, whenever I am in the country, 

 that I am surrounded with a world of variety and beauty of which 

 I was formerly only dimly conscious, and the hope of communicating 

 some of this pleasure to others may, I hope, furnish some apology for 

 my venturing to speak on the subject. 



Classification. — Without entering into any question as to the best 

 classification of the mosses, or the relative systematic value of the dif- 

 ferent groups, the following table, which is arranged in an ascending 

 rank, will be sufficient to show the position of the mosses in the 

 vegetable kingdom, and the principal groups into which they may be 

 divided : — 



TABLE A. 



Vascular 

 Cryptogams 



Muscinese 



Musci 



Sphagnaceai 

 HepaticesB 



Series. 

 /' Pleurocarpse 

 I Acrocarpae 





Anomalese 



Orders. 



( Stegocarpse 

 \ Cleistocarpgo 



J SchizocarpsB 

 \ HolocarpaB 



Examples, 



Hypnum 



Polytriclium 



Pbascum 



Andrsea 

 Archidium 



I Jungermanniacese 

 \ Marchantiacese 

 Algae, &c. 



From this table it will be gathered that the mosses, using that word 

 in its wide signification, stand at the head of the cellular cryptogams, 

 and that above them are the vascular cryptogams, of which the ferns 

 are one of the best-known groups. From these vascular cryptogams 

 the mosses are, however, separated by a distance which Goebel has 

 described as a chasm " the widest with which we are acquainted in 

 the whole vegetable kingdom." 



Vol. XIII. (No. 85.) r 



