TRANSACTIONS 



BOTANICAL SOCIETY. 



SESSION XLIX. 



November 1884. — William B. Boyd, Esq. of Faldonside, 

 President, in the Chair. 



The President, after thanking the Society for the courtesy 

 extended to him during the two years he had been in office, 

 stated that he intended to devote his Valedictory Address 

 to 



Some liemarks on the Study of 3Iosses. 



These tiny members of the vegetable kingdom, recognised 

 by Linnaeus as servants, plants of the winter, crowding in 

 numbers into the spaces relinquished by the higher tribes, 

 though perhaps below the iodine-yielding seaweeds, or the 

 mushrooms, designated by the same naturalist as vagabonds 

 of the vegetable kingdom, and barbarous naked, putrescent, 

 are not without their economic value. But their beauty 

 has attracted, at no time more than the present, the study 

 of the philosophic botanist, the poet painter, or the horti- 

 cultural connoisseur. 



Even by the naked eye, Mosses, with a few exceptions, 

 may be distinguished from Hepaticse, the other of the twin 

 group of Muscales, even in the absence of fruit. For the 

 leaves are not only regular in outline, but there is far more 

 variety in their spiral arrangement, and even in those cases 

 where they are distichous and filmy, there is a peculiar 

 indefinable aspect about them which is seldo deceptive. 



TRANS. DOT. SOC. VOL. XVI. N 



