ON CEPHALOZIA, 



ITS SUBGENEEA AND ALLIED GENEEA. 



In a paper on "The Musci and Hepatic^ of the Pyrenees," read 

 before the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, Jan. 11, 1849, and printed 

 the same year in their ' Transactions' and in the 'Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History,' I proposed to separate from Jungermania a group 

 of small species, consisting mainly of the section Bicuspides of Nees 

 (Hep. Europ. II, 211, a. 1836) to which I gave the name Trigonanthus , 

 because the perianth was normally a trigonous prism. This character, 

 combined with the postieal ramification — all the branches springing 

 from the back, or underside, of the stem, and the polyphyllous tristi- 

 chous involucre, in which underleaves were always present, although 

 often absent from the stem — seemed to amply justify the separation of 

 the group, as a distinct genus, from Jungermania. I did not then know 

 that Dumortier had previously proposed for nearly the same group the 

 name Cephalozia, first in his Sylloge Jungermanidearum Europcn (1831) as 

 a section of Jungermania, thus defined: " Perichsetium polyphyllum un- 

 dique imbricatum, phyllis dissectis : — Species stipulatse vel exstipulatae, 

 foliis subcurrentibus bifariis explanatis divisis." — and afterwards, in his 

 Recueil d' Observations sur les Jungermaniacees (1835) as a genus, with the 

 following essential character : "Pericheze polyphylle, a phylles laciniees, 

 imbriquees circulairement et involucrant la base de la colesule. Colesule 

 sessile dressee renflee contractee et dentee au sommet"; which is a slight 

 modification of the definition given in the Sylloge. In this case, as in 

 that of nearly every genus proposed by Dumortier, were it not for the 

 list of species he gives under each genus, we might be at a loss to re- 

 cognise it from his meagre and more or less incorrect generic character. 

 This has apparently arisen from his imperfect knowledge of the plants 

 themselves, and his reliance on the figures and descriptions of other 

 authors, which also he has sometimes misconstrued or wrongly com- 



