THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[SECOND SERIES.] 

 No. 14. FEBRUARY 1849. 



X. — The Musci and HepaticcB of the Pyrenees. 

 By Richard Spruce*. 



[With three Plates.] 



Before entering upon an enumeration of the Musci and Hepa- 

 ticse of the Pyrenees, it will be proper to indicate the sources 

 from which it has been derived. I have not been able to find 

 any trustworthy record of mosses gathered in the Pyrenees pre- 

 vious to the time of Bridel, who in 1803 visited the Pyrenees 

 Orientales and the northern part of Catalonia, where he disco- 

 vered his Bartramia stricta, Barbula chloronotos and some others. 

 Of Bridel's mosses I have seen only a very few, communicated by 

 Professor Arnott from the herbarium of M. Requien. In the 

 3rd edition of the ' Flore Fran9aise ' (1815) several Pyrenean 

 stations of mosses are recorded, on the authority of DeCandolle, 

 Ramond, Dufour and Grateloup. The two botanists last-named 

 have since that period continued to pay occasional botanical 

 visits to the Pyrenees, almost up to the present time, and to 

 their liberality I owe specimens of such mosses as they collected. 

 In 1825 the eastern and central Pyrenees were visited by our 

 distinguished countrymen, Messrs. G. Bentham and G. A. Walker- 

 Arnott, and the latter gentleman has kindly communicated to 

 me specimens of nearly all his Pyrenean mosses, a few only of 

 which he has noticed in " A Tour to the South of France and 

 the Pyrenees," inserted in the ' Edinburgh New Philosophical 

 Journal for April 1826. Still later, from 1828 to 1830, the 

 eastern Pyrenees were at various times partially explored by Dr. C. 

 Montague, whose knowledge of general Cryptogamy is unrivalled, 

 and his discoveries, including numerous lichens and not a few 

 mosses, were announced by himself in the ' Archives de Bota- 

 nique,' torn. i. (1833), under the title of " Notice sur les Plantes 



* Read before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Jan. 11th, 1819. 

 Ann. £f Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol iii. 6 



