Vol. 43 No. 2 
BULLETIN 
OF THE 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB 
ee 
FEBRUARY, 10916 
New and rare African mosses, from Mitten’s herbarium and 
other sources 
H. N. Drxon 
: (WITH PLATE I) 
It is eminently desirable—if for purposes of reference only— 
in short and scattered bryological papers, especially where new 
species are described, to deal separately with separate geographical 
areas, or at least only with such as can be described in the title 
of the paper. The practice of some authors, of describing in a 
paper purporting to deal with one geographical region, single 
species from quite another part of the globe is, I think, a very 
_unfortunate one, and liable to lead easily to subsequent error. 
The description in the present paper of new species from as widely 
diverse localities as Cape Town, Kilimanjaro and Mauritius, is 
‘not, I believe, a violation of the above canon. For it is more 
than ordinarily difficult to draw a line of demarcation between 
the floristic regions of South and Central Africa. It is an estab- 
lished fact with phanerogams: ‘‘One of the most marked facts 
connected with the flora of this continent is the wide range both 
in latitude and longitude of many of its species. No less than 
one fifth of the «tropical species are common to east and west; 
while the range of the trumpet- or pig-lily, from Cape Town to 
the first cataract of the Nile, is the botanical parallel of the wide 
latitudinal range of the hippopotamus.’’* 
[The BULLETIN for January (43: I-62) was issued February 15, 1916.] 
* See Boulger, Plant Geography 108. 1912 
63 
