190 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Bryophyta. 

 (By A. Gepp.) 



Antarctic Mosses.* — J. Cardot, in a preliminary notice on the 

 mosses collected by the Swedish Antarctic Expedition, criticises 

 C. Muller's Bryologia Austro-Georgise (1889), in which all but one of 

 the 52 species collected by Will in South Georgia are described as 

 endemic. Cardot, having examined the types, sinks 15 of these 

 endemics, and points out that several of the others have been found 

 elsewhere, leaving 26 truly endemic species. Cardot gives a list of 

 80 species, representing the South Georgian collections of Skottsberg, of 

 the Swedish Antarctic Expedition, and 21 of them are new to science, 

 including two genera, Skottsbergia and Pseudodistichium. The total 

 moss-flora of South Georgia consists now of 93 species, 47 of which are 

 endemic, and the rest common to Magellan, Kerguelen, or New Zealand, 

 etc. Only 14 are pleurocarpous. Cardot adds a list of 2:3 species 

 (5 being new) collected by Skottsberg in the strictly Antarctic regions 

 of Louis Philippe Land, Graham Islands, South Shetlands, etc. 



Variability in Philonotis.t — L. Loeske publishes critical notes on 

 some forms of Philonotis. Owing to a false appreciation of the value 

 of certain characters, the affinities of the forms have not been rightly 

 established hitherto. P. laxa Limpr. is an aquatic form of P. marchica, 

 but P. laxa Warnst., from Tannenbergsthal, is a parallel form of 

 P. cozspitosa. In P. borealis Limpr. f . laxa Monkm. we have a parallel 

 form of P. fontana. A form of P. alpicola that reproduces itself by 

 fragile branchlets has been observed. The same species in high altitudes 

 has been found bearing zones of leaves utterly unlike the typical leaves ; 

 this state is probably P. lome/itella Molendo. Extreme forms of this 

 state differ altogether from P. alpicola, and approach P. borealis Limpr. 

 Widely different forms are distributed as P. fontana var. falcata, one 

 of the most pronounced of these being P. seriata, which is connected 

 with P. adpressa Ferg. by intermediates. An adpressa-form of P. fontana 

 is also often referred to P. adpressa Ferg. 



European Hepaticae.J — K. Miiller publishes the first part of the 

 sixth volume of Rabenhorst's Kryptogamen-Flora, which, though 

 treating primarily of the hepatics of Middle Europe, will include the 

 whole of the European species. No adequate attempt to cover this 

 ground has been made since the publication by Nees of his Natur- 

 geschichte der europaischen Lebermoose (1833-8), an elaborate work in 

 4 volumes now rather scarce. The present work, though mainly systematic, 

 begins with a summary of the morphology and biology of the hepatics, 

 treating of the position of the hepatics in the vegetable kingdom, their 

 general characters, and their structure. The morphology of the thallus 

 and its appendages, of the corm or leafy shoot, and of the reproductive 



* Bull. Herb. Boissier, vi. (1906) pp. 1-17. 

 t Hedwigia, xlv. (1906) pp. 100-14. 



\ Rabenhorst's Kryptogamen-Flora, vi., 1 (1905) 64 pp., 51 figs. Leipzig, 

 Rummer. 



