W)H ON ANOMOCLADA. 



lU'cnon per totam regionem granitioam fluminum Orinoco, Casi- 

 quiari, Uaiipes, etc. ; ad arborum pedem radicesque exsertas, raro 

 supra truncos putrescentes. sDDpissime aliis Hepaticis Mucisque 

 {Mastu/ohryis, Lejeuneis, Leucobryo Jilartiano, etc.) consociuta 

 easdemve infestans. 



It ■w^as in the forests of the Trombetas, one of the lower affluents 

 of the Amazon, that I first gathered Odojitoschisma Sphagni \rx South 

 America. Afterwards I saw it along the whole course of the Rio 

 Xegro, especially towards and within the frontier of Venezuela ; and 

 it abounds and fruits freely on the TJaupes, Casiquiari, and Upper 

 Orinoco, where it grows chiefly in the caatinga forests, and, along with 

 other Hepatics {Mastigohrj/a. MicropUrygia, &c.) and Mosses (especially 

 Leucolryum Ulartianum), it builds up soft cones around the foot of little 

 trees, or spreads in broad green, whitish, or rosy patches over the ex- 

 serted roots of larger trees. Very rarely is it seen on the earth itself; 

 and when on prostrate trunks it mostly overruns a living growth of 

 other species, such as choose naturally a matrix of decaying wood. It 

 never grows on Sphacjnum, althougli there is a Sphagnum {S. Negreuse. 

 Spruce) not unfrc(]uent on the rocky banks of the Rio Negro, and 

 often forming a white swelling border to granitic, wooded islands in 

 and above the cataracts. It grows on the bare rock, and when the river 

 is low — thntis, from July to February — it affords a habitat to multitudes 

 of pretty little plants : Drosera tenella, H.B.K. ; several Utricuhrias 

 with slender (sometimes simple) leaves, growing erect among the 

 flower-scapes, and often destitute of utricles, such as U. trichophyUa, 

 Spruce, U. hngiciliata, A. DC, U. cormita, Mx., &c. ; two or three 

 SeJagineUas, and some others ; but no Odontoschisma ever grows on it. 

 As the Rio Kegro approaches its flood-level, the Spliagnum becomes 

 submerged, and sends out under water slender sparsely-branched shoots, 

 a foot or more long, which, as they sway to and fro in the rapid 

 current, look like anything but a Sphagnum, so that until I fished 

 some of them out I took them for the leaves of one of the Podostemons 

 that abound in the cataracts.* 



* On our own moors I have far oftener seen Odontoschisma Sph/iffni growing 

 on Leucohryum fflaucum than on Sphngva. Now that thesteam-plongh is fast obli- 

 teratins: the sihmH remnant of moors in the Vale of York, it is worth while 

 recording something ahout the Leucohryum, as seen on Strensall Moor, five to 

 six miles north of York. There it forms immense rounded hassocks, some of 

 which in my youth were as much as three feet high ; and alth()Tie;h the ground 

 whereon they grew is now drained and ploughed out, T am told that on another 

 part of the moor there are still leffa few hassocks about two feet high. When the 

 late Mr. Wilson first saw them, thirty years ago, he took them at a distance for 

 sheep ; as he approached them he changed his mind for haycocks; but when he 

 actually came up and saw what they were he was astonished, and declared he had 

 never seen such gigantic moss-tufts elsewhere. [Many years afterwards I was 

 forcibly reminded of themM>y the large, whitish, glossy hassocks of Azoi-ellas on the 

 paramos of the Andes.] During eeren consecutive years that I saw them fre- 

 quently, T could observe no sensible increase in height. The very slight annual 

 outgrowth of the marginal branches is comparable to the outermost twigs of an old 

 tree, and is almost or quite counterbalanced by the soft, imperfectly elastic mass 

 incessantly decaying and settling down at the base ; so that these tufts of Leuco- 

 hryum may well be almost as secular as our Oaks or Elms ; and some of them might 

 even be coming into existence, if not so far back as when the warders of Bootham 

 Bar and Monk Bar (the northern entrances to York) used to hear the wolves 



