CURRENT LITERATURE. 
BOOK REVIEWS. 
European moss flora. 
THE SECTION of the monumental Avyfiogamen-Flora von Deutschland, 
Oesterreich, und der Schweiz which describes the mosses, Die Laubmoose by 
Limpricht, has not yet quite come to completion, and the lamentable death of 
its author will doubtless delay somewRat the issue of the last supplementary 
parts. It has been in course of publication since 1886. This for central 
Europe, with the recent descriptive works on the mosses of France and Eng < 
land, have been the only dependence of bryologists who wished anything 
more recent than the second edition of Schimper’s Synopsis Muscorum ( 1876). 
But no general work later than the latter touches Spain, Italy, Russia, or ihe 
Scandinavian countries. It is high time, therefore, for such a gathering 
together of the data on the species of mosses and their European distribu- 
tion as seems planned in Die europdischen Laubmoose* by the grand-ducal 
“‘Rechnungsrat”’ at Laubach (Hesse), Georg Roth. The publication begins 
without preface and with the briefest prospectus. Evidently, from the quick- 
ness with which part follows part, the manuscript is ready for the publisher 
and the work, in ten or twelve parts, making two volumes, is not to drag Its 
weary length along, as some of its predecessors have done. The parts (not 
sold singly) consist of 128 pages each, with ten plates, and are issued at the 
remarkably low price of 4 marks, The plates are photolithographs, very 
crowded and of rather inferior quality, though whether this inferiority 1s ts 
to the drawing, which is done by the author, or to the process of reproduction 
is uncertain. Nevertheless, plates are quite indispensable in such a work and . 
these are certain to be helpful, especially in showing those differential char- 
acters which can be only imperfectly conveyed by words. : 
The systematic arrangement departs very little from that of Schimper’ 
Synopsis and Limpricht’s Lauémoose, so as to reduce to a minimum the diffi- 
culties of using the books together. Zin 
an introductory section of 100 pages the general meme SS 
anatomical structure, reproduction, geographic distribution, and ecology 0 
the mosses are treated, followed by brief directions for collecting and naming, 
and illustrated by three plates. This section, necessarily quite elementary, * 
well done, especially the chapter on ecology. a 
The descriptions are in German, covering half a page to a page, ris 
diagnostic characters indicated. The synonymy is brief, and the habitat a” 
distributions are given rather fully. The Sphagnaceae will be excluded. 
*Rotu, GEorG, Die europaischen Laubmoose. Imp. 8vo. Parts I-4. PP- 15/* 
bls. 1-36, 46-49. Leipzig : Wilhelm Engelmann. 1903. 4 per part. 
150 [FEBRUARY 
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