vl INTRODUCTION. 



and his own pupil Schwaegrichen ; but, perhaps, hy none so 

 effectually as Bridel, whose works upon the Mosses, though full 

 of the strangest errors as to species and synonyms, contain a 

 history of the science, and a review of whatever is connected with 

 it, at once admirable and unrivalled. To him, therefore, we refer 

 our readers for information on this head, and also to the excellent 

 treatise, " Zur Charakteristik der Ordnung der Laubmoose" 

 which constitutes the introductory part of the Bryologia Ger- 

 manica of Nees Von Esenbeck and Hornschuch. The Memoirs, 

 too, of our countryman Mr. Brown, in the Transactions of the 

 Linnsean Society, and those of Dr. Greville and Mr. Arnott in 

 the Transactions of the Wernerian Society, accompanied with a 

 great number of beautiful figures, may be consulted with great 

 advantage. The line which we have drawn out for ourselves in 

 the present undertaking, precludes us from entering upon this 

 subject in the manner we could wish ; our intention in this preface 

 being little more than briefly to state what may be expected in its 

 pages. 



No country, perhaps, of similar extent, is more favourable to 

 the growth of Mosses than the British isles, where there is so 

 great a variety of soil, and no inconsiderable difference in the 

 climate, between the plains and the summits of our highest hills. 

 Our woods, morasses, rocks, and shaded banks, afford nourish- 

 ment to a variety of species ; and our mountains, though of in- 

 considerable elevation when compared with the Alps of Switzer- 

 land and Savoy, of Germany and the Pyrenees, yet on account of 

 their more northern latitude, and of their rising nearly to the 

 limits of perpetual snow, produce most of the Mosses of those 

 highly favoured regions. In so few parts of Europe has the 

 Muscology of the country been fully investigated, that we 

 scarcely feel ourselves competent to draw a comparison between 

 this department of the Flora of any district and our own ; and 

 the attempt we made to do so, in the preface to our first edition 



