ON A NEW MOSS FKOM TASMANIA. 167 



Lycopodium alpimim, Linn. Has been twice reported from our 

 N.E. corner, but no specimens have as yet come to hand. 



Chara. Nicely-selected specimens of the whole genus are very 

 much wanted. 



A few reminders are appended to correspondents, which are points 

 of considerable practical importance to anyone woiking up a Flora. 



All transmitted records of even common species should be clear and 

 definite, by which expression it is meant, that should the author wish 

 to verify the plant for himself in the given spot, he should have a 

 reasonable chance of re-finding it by the help of such record. Another 

 point. All such records should proceed from the correspondent's own 

 personal observation of the plant in the spot specified, or, where such 

 information is acquired from a book or a friend, the correspondent 

 should distinctly state the source. I^^o more fertile cause of botanical 

 error has existed in the past than this lax habit of repeating as your 

 own some botanical fact told you by someone else. It is not intended 

 by the above remarks to infer that editors of Floras can only be 

 assisted by personal plant-observation of contributors. On the con- 

 trary, the indication of any printed source of information which is 

 likely to be inaccessible to such an editor is often very useful. Per- 

 sons also who never visited a county can contribute to its Flora by 

 going through their herbaria and copying out the tickets of any local 

 species which comes from the county in question. 



How fugitive and ephemeral such botanical record is may be best 

 judged from two instances. A series of papers on the botany of Dane's 

 Moss, near Macclesfield, was published, say ten years ago, by a 

 gentleman, name unknown, in the columns of a Cheshire county paper, 

 name forgotten. Again, in the first volume of the Phytologist, p. 700, 

 Mr. Perry, a bookseller at Warwick, mentions, as being in his hands, 

 an old herbal relating to the vicinity of Knutsford, and dating about 

 the middle of the last century. Notwithstanding the kind assistance 

 of his widow it is now impossible to trace this volume. If the 

 quality of the few extracts given is maintained through the remainder 

 of the work, the loss to Cheshire botany caused by its disappear- 

 ance is simply irreparable. More than this, as a test of the permanence 

 of species in a given neighbourhood, not much altered during a century, 

 the work may at the present day prove of wider botanical importance. 



ON A NEW MOSS FEOM TASMANIA. 

 Br Prof. S. 0. Lindbbrg, 



I HAVE to-day received from my friend Baron F. von Miiller, the 

 renowned Director of the Botanic Gardens of Melbourne, a small tuft 

 of a Moss, gathered this year by Mr. Robert Johnston on turfy soil 

 near Picton River, in Tasmania. This Moss is of the highest im- 

 portance, indeed of no less interest to the Muscologist than is 

 Rafflesia or Welivitschia to the Phanerogamist. It is, in fact, a very 

 robust Phascaceoua plant with the fruit perfectly lateral on the stem ! 

 I dare not as yet call it truly pleurocarpous, as its affinity is most 



