I860.] BRYOLOGY OF OXFORD. 343 



well established near the entrance into Horton, by the road or 

 path, for it partakes of both characters, leading from the Wrays- 

 bury station to the village. 



It has evidently spread from the interior over the bank, and 

 downwards into the ditch, but it is in a fair way of increasing its 

 area. The uninitiated in the science cannot be expected to know 

 the distinctions said to be established between natives, denizens, 

 colonists, spontaneous, apparently introduced, and certainly natu- 

 ralized or only accidental plants, and hence it is charitable to 

 give them descriptions of all such plants as they are likely to 

 find, and to leave to the botanical geographer the settlement of 

 conflicting claims to nativity and nationality. R. 



Bryology of the Neighbourhood of Oxford. 



By H. BoswELL. 



As far as I am aware, no account of the Bryology of Oxford- 

 shire has been given to the botanical world since the publication 

 of Sibthorp's ' Flora Oxoniensis,^ near seventy years ago, with 

 the exception of some three or four species mentioned in Purton^s 

 ' Midland Flora,' by Mr, Baxter. Since the days when Sibthorp 

 wrote, much progress has been made in our knowledge of Bry- 

 ology, and through the works of Bruch and Schimper, of Wilson, 

 etc., any tyro in the science knows much at the present day that 

 was hidden from that excellent botanist. Indeed the knowledge 

 of the inflorescence has put the study of Mosses on a new basis, 

 and every year adds one or two to our list of species. But while 

 the Lancashire botanists have been assiduously working at the 

 Bryology of the north, and others have done almost as much for 

 the counties of the southern coast, the midland counties have, as 

 far as I am aware, been quite neglected in this respect, and much 

 remains to be ascertained before the distribution of British Mosses 

 will be mapped out as accurately as that of the Flowering Plants 

 are. As a contribution towards the geographical range of these 

 plants, I send you the following notes upon the Mosses growing 

 in the neighbourhood of Oxford, so far as I have been able to see 

 them during sundry rambles in the course of two winters, those 

 of 1858-9 and 1859-60, with the intervening summer. 



