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SHORT NOTES. 



or growth of the new out of the old. I am convinced that mere 

 arbitrary and artificial standards — such as those lately proposed — 

 cannot have an abiding value. In fact, in the immediate application 

 of them they may admit of as many variations and errors of judg- 

 ment as the methods do which they are designed to supplant. The 

 starting-points of the proposed new nomenclature seem to me to be 

 more vague and uncertain than those of the old. This is particu- 

 larly true of the use of the oldest specific name as compared with 

 the use of the oldest complete name or combination. I therefore 

 believe that usage is the only foundation upon which an enduring 

 and intelligible structure can be built." 



SHORT NOTES. 



Plant-remains in Peat. — The following note may supplement 

 Mr. Gepp's article in the June number. I recently had a specimen 

 of a hard peaty substance given me, which had been dug up near 

 Hollow Drove, Eamsey Fen, Hunts, and which on examination 

 proved to be almost entirely composed of fragments of a single 

 species of moss, Camptothecium nitcns Schreb., compressed into a 

 block of compact almost woody consistency, very brittle when dry, 

 but only needing to be soaked in water to restore the leaves 

 sufficiently to allow of easy recognition under the microscope ; 

 indeed, some of the stems were an inch long, and almost intact ; 

 but the greater part was fragmentary, and showed that it was 

 probably an agglomeration of broken pieces of plants, not the 

 remains of a bed of moss in situ. The stiiking part of it was the 

 quantity of material; my informant stated that it extended over 

 "a large plot," and averaged a foot thick, the whole being, in his 

 opinion, formed of the same material. It lay from two to three feet 

 below the surface, the supervening soil being, he believed, the 

 ordinary undisturbed peat of the fens ; this was being removed, 

 probably for the purpose of erecting farm buildings, when the 

 stratum in question was laid bare. It is rarely that we find a tract 

 that can be measured by square yards composed entirely of a single 

 species of moss, even of Sphagnum, and it argues an unusual 

 abundance of the plant in question that such a mass of debris 

 should apparently consist of it alone ; in the specimen brought me, 

 weighing perhaps a pound, I have not been able to find a single 

 fragment of any other moss. It is the more interesting because 

 C, nitens is now hardly to be found in the southern half of England, 

 a single locality in Norfolk mentioned in Wilson's Brijotogia 

 Britannica constituting the only locality south of the Mersey, 

 so far as I am aware, whence it has been recorded in modern 

 times. I can form no opinion as to the probable age of the above 

 deposit. — H. N. Dixon. 



Carex pauciflora in Ireland. — While searching for mosses and 

 hepatics in June, 1889, on the mountains near Parkmore, at the 

 head of Glenariffe, Co. Antrim, I found a huge tussock of Sphagnum 



