NO. 3 BRITISH EAST AFRICAN MOSSES DIXON II 



species?" So far as my observation goes, B. sciuroidcs and B. 

 Schmipcri stand on a somewhat different footing- from the others ; 

 but the Indian plant is most certainly identical with that which occurs 

 in several parts of Africa, and which has generally been known as 

 B. diaphana. It is especially frequent in South Africa, where it 

 fruits commonly. The fruit is described by Theriot ; ^ and Brotherus ^ 

 says of it, " Kapsel unbekannt." I have several fruiting specimens 

 from South Africa, however, and the fruit occurs on several speci- 

 mens in the British Museum and Kew collections. Both vegetatively 

 and in the fruit the Indian plant is exactly identical with the African, 

 and as Mitten finds the Kilimanjaro plant identical with the Mexican 

 there can be no doubt that they must all fall under the name B. 

 secunda. As regards the Indian and African plants at least, I do 

 hot find even the " slight variations " which jMitten allows them. The 

 leaves vary in the degree of plication. They may be quite without 

 a hyaline point, or they may have a short hyaline tip, even occasion- 

 ally a quite long, flexuose hair-point, and the perichaetial leaves vary 

 much in length ; but none of these characters shows any constancy, 

 nor are they correlated in any way with geographical distribution. 



In the course of studying the Indian plant, however, I stumbled 

 upon a very unexpected thing: In the British Museum collection, 

 in Herb. Wilson, there are two specimens of an undetermined moss, 

 labelled " Indies, Winierbotham," which are identical with my B. 

 hrachythcca. I find no reference to it in any bryological works, and 

 it appears to have remained, otherwise than in Wilson's herbarium, 

 quite undetected. It can scarcely be supposed that two independent 

 species, B. secunda and B. hrachytheca, would exist side by side both 

 in Africa and in India, especially with the very restricted range that 

 appears to appertain to B. hrachytheca ; and I have therefore thought 

 it best to consider the latter as a subspecies of B. secunda^ 



^Bull. Soc. Bot. Geneve II. 9: I35- I9i7- 

 ''Engl. & Prantl, Pflanzenfam. i^ : 7icS. 1905. 



^ It may be as well to give here the more important part of the synonymj' of 

 B. secunda, so far as it bears on our African plant : 



BRAUNIA SECUNDA (Hook.) B. S. G. Bryol. Eur. (29-30:) Braunia 3. 1846. 



Hcdwigia secunda YLook. JNIusc. Fxot. />/. ^6. 181S-1820. 



Neckera macropchna C. M. Syn. 2: 104. 1851. 



Braunia macropelina ]aeg. Adambr. 2: 87. 1869-1870. 



Hcdwigia indica Mitt. Journ. inn. Soc, Bot. 3 : Suppl. 123. 1S59. 



Braunia jndica Far. Ind. 149. 1894. 



Neckera diaphana C. JNI. Syn. 2: 105. 1851. 



Braunia diapliana }aeg. Adumbr. 2: 87. 1874-1875. 



