INTRODUCTION. 
SO large is the proportion of Mosses, Hepatice, Sea-weeds and Lichens, brought home by the 
Antarctic Expedition, as compared with the Phenogamic plants, and they contain so much of 
interest and novelty, that, at the request of several able Cryptogamic Botanists, I have been 
induced to prepare a few copies illustrative of these Tribes, unconnected with the entire Flora 
of the Antarctic Regions. It gives me the greatest pleasure to comply with this request, be- 
cause I am thus afforded the means of illustrating the labours of my distinguished coadjutors, 
the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, Mr. Wilson, Dr. Taylor, and Dr. Harvey, in a suitable manner, and 
giving them to the world in a far cheaper form than that of any similar publication. 
The number of Mosses to be described under the head of the several localities where 
they were collected, amounts to nearly three hundred species. In their determination, my 
friend, Mr. Wilson, has afforded me the aid of his unequalled acumen and knowledge of this 
tribe ; every species having been subjected by both of us to the most rigid analysis. Nor am 
I less indebted to that gentleman for assisting me in the Plates, many of the dissections being 
wholly due to his pencil. It is to be regretted that neither space nor time was allowed us to 
dwell upon the geographical distribution of the Mosses, without. interfering with the physio- 
logical and anatomical remarks, which, though few, are the results of many years patient 
investigation of living specimens. 
To Dr. Taylor I owe the diagnoses of all the Hepatice: his acknowledged merit as a 
Cryptogamic Botanist is a warrant for the able execution of this portion of the Work. I have 
myself farther subjected them to the most careful examination; added somewhat to the 
descriptions; and prepared the dissections which accompany them. I lament, however, the 
impossibility of representing all the new species in this work; many of those that are un- 
avoidably omitted being equally worthy of illustration with such as have been figured. 
