38 
POPTJLAE SCIENCE ISTEWS. 
[March, 1891. 
H. tridentata (Say) is very pretty. The animal 
is of a dark bluish-slate color. 
II. intertexa (Binney) is shaped nearly like an 
old-fashioned bee-hive. 
The small H. monodon has so narrow a door that 
it is difficult to see how the animal gets out for a 
walk. 
The little H. perspeetiva (Say) is shaped like a 
saucer. We took seventy of these out of the 
decayed wood in an old stumpr 
Zonites inornata (Say) is light yellowish-horn 
color. The edges of the shell are not often found 
perfect. 
Z. fuliginosa (Griff) is a beauty — glossy brown 
on the outside, and the mouth lined with bluish 
pearl. 
Hyalina nitida (Mflller) is the smallest land-shell 
we have found. It was under a block of wood at 
the front door, to which a foot-scraper w-as fas- 
tened. The wood lay close to the large stone 
steps, and was decayed on the under side. Hav- 
ing taken several at different times for three years 
past, I conclude they live under the edge of tjje 
stone. 
Succinea totteniana (Lea) has the same speckled 
appearance as thyroides. The shell is frail and 
only a cover for its back. This has been plenty 
at Van Buren and in low lands about Canadaway 
Creek. 
On the south side of Cayuga Island, at La Salle, 
N. Y., we found plenty of Macrocydis concava 
(Say). The shell and the animal were very light 
cream color. The shape is similar to that of H. 
alternata, which is also abundant there. 
Some of the names we took from an old report 
on the shells of New York State. All except U. 
palliata and H. monodon have been verified for us 
by a member of the Isaac Lea Memorial Chapter 
of the A. A. 
To ascertain the size they would attain in one 
year, we took from the woods, April 27, 1889, H. 
alternata and S. palliata, — two or three of each 
species, — and put them in a separate box. About 
May 27 clusters of eggs were under the moss — 
twenty or thirty in each cluster. The young 
snails came out about June 10. At four months 
old the young alternata were only one-sixth adult 
size, while the palliata were one-fourth adult size. 
Wlien one year old the former were about one- 
half adult size, and the latter two-thirds adult 
size. The shells of both were quite frail. Per- 
haps in the woods they get food which suits them 
better ; and yet we conclude it is likely that they 
do not attain full size until the second year, and 
that the shell then grows stouter. We are sure 
the alternata are cannibals, as we sometimes found 
the palliata with the top of the shell eaten off, 
and the alternata making a dinner of the inmate. 
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
MOSSES— PROF. LEO LESQUEREUX. 
We are peculiarly fortunate in being able to 
give to our readers the following hitherto unpub- 
lished paper from the pen of the late eminent 
Professor Lesquereux. Before his death, one of 
our A. A. members wrote to him to inquire for 
some simple introduction to the study of mosses. 
Professor Lesquereux replied that he did not 
know of any excepting an introduction which he 
had written for his famous work. Manual of the 
Mosses of North America. This introduction, he 
said, had been omitted from the book in order to 
save expense; it had been mislaid, but he would 
find it if possible and forward it. Professor Les- 
quereux died before he was able to do this, but 
his son, finding it recently amoufir his father's 
papers, has sent it, with full permission to pub- 
lish it. 
*♦» 
INTRODUCTION ON THE GENERAL CHAR- 
ACTERS OF MOSSES. 
BY PKOF. LEO LESQUEREUX. 
1. Mode of Propagation of Mosses. — Mosses are 
reproduced by the germination of spores or by 
propagules. The seminal granule, or spore, is a 
small, round body, formed of two membranes; 
the outer, perispore, more solid, often granulose 
on the surface, generally of a peculiar color; the 
inner, soft, hyaline, and containing the elements 
necessary for gennination. ^Vllen perfect spores 
are ripe and exposed to humidity, the inner mem- 
brane becomes swollen, the perispore is ruptured, 
and allows the protrusion of the primordial cell — 
the first growth of the moss, named proembryo. 
This proembryonal utricle is first divided into two 
cells, which, by subsequent subdivisions, consti- 
tute more or less elongated filaments, which, by 
anastomosing at •various angles, compose a con- 
fervoidal tissue, prothallium, upon which buds of 
new plants are developed. Another mode of re- 
production of the inosses, still more frequent, is 
from the development of buds, tubercles, or fila- 
ments, derived from different parts of mature 
plants. Effete leaves, branchlets, lenticular gran- 
ules, pseudopodes, attached to the leaves or the 
stems, — all have the property of sprouting into 
radicles and producing new plants. 
2. The Boot. — This organ, essential for fixing 
the plants to their place of growth, is found in 
all mosses. As rootlets, or radicles, they are not 
only attached to the base of the stems, but often 
distributed in fascicles along the stems and the 
branches, which they sometimes cover as with a 
matting, or tomentum. They may even appear at 
the top of the branchlets, or upon the surface of 
the leaves. They are composed of a single series 
of oblique cells with contiguous walls {parietes). 
They are either simple, or at length forked, or in 
fascicles. So-called "creeping roots" are merely 
subterranean branches, stolons, analogous to rhi- 
zomes — a continuation of, or shoot from, the base 
of the plant. 
3. The Stem. — lliough sometunes very short, 
the stem is present in all the mosses. In the 
annual Acrocarpi it is generally simple; but it 
becomes compound by repeated simple, double, or 
multiple innovations when perennial. It is truly 
ramified only in the Fleurocarpi, whose lateral 
fructification does not impede the growth. For 
in the Acrocarpi, the fructifications being terminal 
and late, the annual development is continued 
only by lateral gemmules from under the flowers 
for the vegetation of a second year. As these 
annual innovations are not always simple, but in 
twos, threes, or more, the old plants are some- 
times simple, sometimes double, or many times 
dichotomous, or fastigiately branched. In the 
Fleurocarpi the ramification is very varied — dif- 
fuse, pinnate, bipinnate, ramulose, fasciculate, etc. 
4. The Leaves. — The leaves are present in all 
mosses, in their natural state of development. 
They are generally horizontally attached to the 
stems, sometimes obliquely, rarely vertically. 
Their relative position varies in different species 
— sometimes even in different parts of the same 
plant. The characters of the leaves, their mode 
of attachment, their forms, the divisions of the 
borders, — which are never lobate, but entire, or 
dentate, or ciliate, etc., — the appearance of the 
surface, — opaque, glossy, papillose, etc., — are ex- 
pressed by common botanical terms. They are 
generally formed of a simple stratum of cellules 
of various forms, or, in rare cases, of superposed, 
doul)le, or triple layers of cellules. 
5. The Organs of Generation. — The flowers of 
the mosses, like those of the phoenogamous plants, 
are unisexual or bisexual; they are polygamous 
or synoecibus when male and female organs are 
mixed in the same involucre ; monoecious or autcB- 
cious when in separate buds on distant or separate 
branches ; parrecious wl»en the antheridia are freel 
in the axils of the perichoedial leaves; androgy- 
nous or hypogynous when the male and female 
flowers are close to each other or separated by a 
single leaf. In the Acrocarpi, the flowers, either 
female or bisexual, are produced at the top of the 
stems or of the innovations. The male flowers 
are sometimes similarly placed, but more gener- 
ally on the sides of the branches, especially at the 
base of the female flowers, which throw them 
aside in their growth. In the Fleurocarpi, the 
flowers — always lateral — are upon stems or 
branches. Polygamous as well as female flow- 
ers are enclosed into a kind of involucre of im- 
bricated leaves, of which the inner ones— origi- 
nally tlie smallest — gradually increase in size 
during tlie evolution of the fruit, forming a pecu- 
liar envelope, perich<xti%im, which surrounds the 
inflated oval support of the i)edicle, the vaginule. 
I'he involucre of the male flowers, perigonium, is 
not subject to a modification of the same kind, 
though the inner leaves generally differ from the 
outer in some characters. The female organs of 
the mosses, archegonia pistellidia, show the great- 
est analogy to the pistils of the phjBuogamous 
plants. They are flask-shaped bodies, each with 
a cellular covering, narrowed upwards into a 
cylindrical tube, stylidium or collmn, which, vari- 
able in length in different species, rem.ains closed 
until the anthesis, when it opens by an enlarging 
funnel-like mouth, to receive and give passage to 
the fecundating matter. The archegones are more 
or less numerous in the dift'erent species, — two to 
thirty, or even more; — but generally one only is 
fructified, rarely two or three, the fruits iu this 
case being clustered in the s.ame perichoetium. 
The male organs of the mosses, antheridia, en- 
closed with paraphyses in the perigonium, are gen- 
erally composed of two parts,— an utricle, of an 
oval elongated form, rarely globose, containing 
the spermatozoid matter; and a pedicle, either 
short or somewhat elongated. AVhen replete, the 
antheridia are swollen, greenish white or hyaline 
at the apex; when empty, they become flaccid, 
rugose, reddish or dirty yellovy, and deformed by 
compression. At the time of fecundation the sub- 
clavate bacillate spermatozoids convolute in spiral, 
being freed from the spermatozoid mass wherein 
they are mixed, have a spiral motion of their own, 
—like small living animals,— and penetrate the 
archegones through the cylindrical tube. The 
number of tlie antheridia is, lilie that of the 
archegones, variable according to genera and spe- 
cies. Filamentose organs, paraphyses, are mixed 
with the antheridia and archegones ; they vary in 
their form and their number. They are generally 
as long, or even longer than the antheridia; fili- 
form and slender ingemmaceous flowers, subcla- 
vate, spathulate, etc., in discoid or anthoid ones. 
6. The Fruit.— In ripening, the base of the fer- 
tilized archegone gradually enlarges into a cap- 
sule, theca, composed of two walls; the inner, 
sporogone, or sporange, soft, thin, which at matu- 
rity contains the spores, and which either adheres 
to the outer walls, or, free— except at its base— is 
like a sm.all cylindrical bag attached to the outer 
walls by filaments. In the process of its growth, 
the cellular part covering the sporange becoming 
