THE SPHAGNACE£ OR PEAT-MOSSES 



OF 



EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA. 



CHAPTER I. 



LITERATURE OF THE GENUS SPHAGNUM. 



The name cr<f>ayvo<; was first used by the ancient botanists, Theo- 

 phrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, to indicate certain species of 

 Salvia and Lichen; but as a genus of mosses Sphagnum was 

 established by Dillenius in his first work, Catalogus Plantarum 

 sponte circa Gissam nascentium (1719), though not in the restricted 

 sense as now understood, since he included in it various other 

 mosses which had no evident pedicels, as Grimmia apocarpa, 

 Hedwigia ciliala, CrypJuza, &c. 



Before his time, however, Lobel had figured a true species — 

 S. actcti/olium — in his /cones Stirpium, ii. p. 242 (1591), under the 

 name of Muscus terrestris vulgaris ; and a century later Plukenet 

 figured S. cymbi/olium, in his Phytographia, as Muscus palustris 

 in ericetis nascens Jloridus, and Vaillant, in his Boianicon Parisiense 

 (1727), also gives figures of the same. 



Dillenius, in the third edition of Ray's Synopsis Stirpium 

 Britannicarum (1724), adopts the genus, with the observation, 

 " This moss is like none of the terrestrial, but has a peculiar aspect, 

 nor is it produced anywhere else but in bogs and marshes." In 

 his celebrated Historia Muscorum (1 741) he introduced sixteen 

 species of Sphagnum, but the only genuine are S. palustre molle 

 dejlexum, squamis cymbiformibus = S. cymbifolium, and S. palustre 

 molle dejlextim, squamis capillaceis with a var. /3 fluitans — S. acuti- 

 foliu7n 4- cuspidatum. 



Linnaeus, in his Species Plantarum (1753), still retained 

 Cryphcea heteromalla as Sphagnum arboreum, and recognized only 



