340 
ON SAGINA NIVALIS, Lindbl. 
By C. C. Basineron, M.A., F.R.S., F.L.S. 
In my Manual (ed. 3, p. 48) I mentioned a specimen fouud on 
Glass Mhiel, a mountain in Forfarshire, as perhaps the Sagina nivalis. 
That plant I now believe to be S. saxatilis. 
Dr. Walker- Arnott introduced into the * British Flora’ (ed. 7, p. 64; 
the second edition edited by him), under S. subulata, the words, 
* B. almost quite glabrous. S. nivalis, Fries;" and as its locality, 
* Isle of Skye and Clova Mountains.” The same words will be found 
in the eighth edition of the Flora. Dr. Walker-Arnott has informed 
the editor that he is now unable to find the specimens (if he has them) 
or the authorities upon which that statement rests, and we must there- 
fore remain in doubt for a time concerning the correctness of his de- 
termination of the identity of the plants with that of Fries. I fully 
agree with the remark (Journ. Bot. I. 355) that an * almost quite gla- 
brous " state of S. subulata is not the S. nivalis. 
The first announcement of the true S. nivalis as a native of Scotland 
appeared in this Journal (I. 355) from the pen of Mr. H. C. Watson ; 
but it was apparently first detected by Mr. Boswell Syme, amongst speci- 
mens gathered on Ben Lawers by Professor Balfour, on August 25, 
1847. ‘They were intermixed with examples of Alsine rubella. Re- 
cently Dr. Balfour has been so kind as to give me good specimens of 
it gathered on that occasion, and also others obtained by him on the 
same mountain towards the end of August, 1864. He likewise found 
it on a mountain by Glen Dochart, called “ Stobinnain," in the same 
month. 
The true S. nivalis, Lindbl., is little known to botanists. It has been 
obtained from very distant parts of the northern regions. Blytt found it 
on the Dorvefjeld, in Norway ; Vahl figures it from specimens gathered 
between Godshaab and Upernavik, in Greenland; and Malmgren records 
it in ‘ Ofversigt af Spetsbergens Fanerogam-Flora’ (also Seem. Journ. 
of Bot. ii. 141) as a native of Spitzbergen. It also appears, by a re- 
ference in Hooker’s * Distribution of Arctic Plants ’ (Linn. Trans. xxiii, 
287 and 321), to have been found in the Asiatic part of the country 
of the Samojedes. In Norway it seems to grow only at a great eleva- 
tion on the mountains, in Greenland and Siberia it appears to descend 
