1920-21.] BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH 67 



Some Moss Records from St. Kilda. By William 

 Evans, F.R.S.E. 



(Read 20th January 1921.) 



For reasons one can readily appreciate an island i.s ahvays 

 a place of interest to the naturalist, and the more remote 

 and inaccessible the greater the interest it arouses. Ikying 

 out in the Atlantic, some 40 miles west of Harris, St. Kilda 

 was bound to attract attention, and the chief features of 

 its fauna and flora are already known. Much has been 

 written regarding its wonderful avi-fauna, and in the 

 cataloguing of the insects and other invertebrates con- 

 siderable progress has been made. The flora, too, has 

 been fairly well investigated as regards the flowering 

 plants and ferns by R. M. Barrington (Journ. of Bot., 

 1886, p. 213) and A. H. Gibson (Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin., 

 xix, 1891, p. 155). So far as I know, however, the only 

 mosses specifically recorded are three mentioned by James 

 Murray in a note on " Microscopic Life of St. Kilda " 

 (Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., 1905, p. 94), and three others given 

 in a paper by Dr. C. Gordon Hewitt entitled " A Contribu- 

 tion to a Flora of St. Kilda; being a List of certain 

 Lichens, Mosses, Hepaticae, and Fresh-Water Algae " (ibid., 

 1907, p. 289). 



In June 1905 the Rev. James Waterston, B.Sc, visited 

 St. Kilda and brought back a number of mosses which 

 were submitted to the late Mr. James M' Andrew, a list 

 of whose determinations was given to me by Mr. Waterston, 

 and also one or two additional specimens he collected in 

 1906. While staying at St. Kilda in September 1911 

 Dr. W. Eagle Clarke procured some samples of moss for 

 me, and from this material further records were obtained. 

 From the above sources the following list has been drawn 

 up, the letters after each species referring to the name of 

 the collector. 



The number of species in the present list is 32, three of 

 them being additions to the Outer Hebrides (V.C. 110) list 

 as shown in the 1907 "Census" of British Mosses. There 

 is a tendency to departure from type in several of the 



TRANS. BOT. SOC. EDIN. VOL. XXVIU. 6 



