54 Eucephalozia 



The Eng. Bot. figure represents a more compact and tufted form than what is 

 usually found ; but richly-fiTiiting specimens, gathered by the late Mr. WUson on 

 Delamere Forest, and preserved in his herbarium under the name y. injiata var. laxa, 

 exactly agree with it. 



As no one seems to know what Jung, bifida, Sehreb. in Schmidel., really was, and 

 it has been referred by succeeding authors to nearly every bifid-leaved yiingermania, 



that name may safely be dismissed. 



Ten years after Lyell's specimens were" gathered, and figured (but misnamed) in 

 Eng. Bot., the same plant was found by Funck in the Eiesengebu'ge, and the speci- 

 mens distributed ia his excellent ' Exsiccata,' under the name Jungermania fluitans, 

 given to them by Nees (1. c). Tet in 1836, in the 2nd vol. of his Europa's Leber- 

 moose, Nees reduced it to y. inflata Huds. as var. d fluitans. The two species are, 

 with the sole exception of the obtusely -lobed leaves, so utterly unhke, that it is difficult 

 to conceive how a consummate hepaticologist, Hke Nees, should have ever confounded 

 them. It may sufiice to contrast their chief characters, which are, for C. fluitans, the 

 stem rooting by numerous stout flagella; the branches, whether foliiferous or flo- 

 liferous, all postieal ; the longer, narrower and more laxly-reticulate leaves; the con- 

 stant presence of underleaves ; the cladocarpous inflorescence ; the tiistichous female 

 bracts, toothed at the base, and the innermost embracing the jperiauth ; finally the 

 liueari-fusifoi-m, trigonous, thin perianth. But in Jung, inflata there are no flagella; 

 the branches arise variously from the mid-axil of a leaf, or from its postieal angle, and 

 the female flowers are borne on the apex of the stem or of long leafy branches ; there 

 are no .underleaves at all, except very rarely a small subfloral one ; the bracts are dis- 

 tichous, conformable to the leaves, and usually remote fi'om the perianth (whence the 

 species becomes the type of Dumortier's spurious genus Gymnocolea); and the pe- 

 rianth itself is pyiiform, inflated, aed obscurely 4 — o-pHcate only at the very apex: 

 it is besides composed of 2 strata of cells up to J of its height. 



I had never gathered, or even seen, Cephalozia fluitans, uutU my friend, Mr. 

 Stabler, on Nov. 5, 1875, picked it out of Sphagna gathered on Fowlshaw Moss, near 

 Levens, the previous September. By long searching he found on it flowers of both 

 sexes, but neither fi-uit nor perianths ; so that although he felt sure he had got hold of 

 something new, and had a clear perception of its affinities, he was uaturaUy dubious 

 of its exact place. Writing to me, with specimens, two days later, he said "At one 

 time I thought it might be a Harpanthus, but the absence of flageUa in that genus is 

 opposed to such a notion. Then the cut leaves seem to remove it fi-om Odontoschisma. 

 It has some features in common with Adelanthus, but still more with Cephalozia. . . 

 . . . The male inflorescence varies considerably. Sometimes the amentum is short, 

 at other times elongate ; nay even the apex of the stem may be antheriferous. Each 

 leaf (or bract) which encloses an anther has thi'ee lobes, the front lobe reduced to a 

 smaU tooth." My readers may be interested also with Mr. Stabler's sketch of the site 

 of this remarkable plant. " Fowlshaw Moss covers two or thi-ee thousand acres, or 

 perhaps more. It lies on the north side of Morecambe Bay, due north from MUn- 

 thoi-pe, and at its nearest point about two miles away from Levens. It consists of 



