1858.] THIRSK NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, 405 



I fancy that the difference between the plant grown in the Cam- 

 bridge Botanic Garden and that which I described in the ' Phy- 

 tologist^ is rather apparent than real, rather in the manner of 

 stating the characters than in the characters themselves. For 

 instance, what I intended to convey by calling the seeds of the 

 plant ' oblong-fusiform, broader above/ was, that they are inter- 

 mediate in shape between those of obscurum (called oblong- 

 obovate in the ' Manual') and those of palustre (called there 

 sub-fusiform), and this is by no means inconsistent with Mr. 

 Babington's version of the case, ' twice as large as those of E. 

 obscurwn, they widen gradually from their base to their top.' 

 However, I hope to procure a further supply of specimens this 

 season, and, if so^ will send Mr. Babington as good a range as I 

 can meet with. I have not myself cultivated the plant, but gar- 

 den-grown examples from Mr. Watson look far more like tetra- 

 gonum than palustre. 



" As regards the name ligulatum, it was offered as a mere 

 suggestion in case the plant proved novel; not by any means 

 formally proposed. It seems that here again my terminology is 

 somewhat at variance with that of Mr. Babington, so that per- 

 haps a word of further explanation is needed. I would call ty- 

 picalfy lanceolate a leaf three times as long as broad, broadest 

 about three-quarters of the way down, and narrowed gradually 

 towards each end. The leaves of tetragonum agree well enough 

 with this definition, and I would certainly call them lanceolate 

 rather than ligulate. Lanceolate, I observe, is the precise ex- 

 pression employed both by Koch and Hooker. By a ligulate 

 leaf, on the other hand, I understand one in which there is an 

 approach to parallelism in the edges, for a considerable proportion 

 of its length. Mnium undulatum furnishes as good an illustra- 

 tion of this as I can call to mind. The leaves of the Gormire 

 certainly do not attain this standard, but I considered that they 

 approached it much more closely than is the case in either te- 

 tragonum, obscurwn, or palustre ; but, as explained previously, 

 they are liable to considerable variation, and I have no wish to 

 insist upon the rigid appropriateness of the name. With refer- 

 ence to the suggested identity of the Gormire plant with those of 

 foreign authors mentioned by Mr, Babington, I can only say 

 that I have not seen the ' Flora Sedinensis,' but that by Koch, 

 Godron, and Reichenbach, E. Schnidtianum of Rostkovius is given 



