20 



made and seconded that the time of our second meeting in De- 

 cember be changed to December 19. 



Dr. Karling announced that there was no money in the fund 

 for refreshments and said he would be willing to accept contri- 

 butions after the meeting. 



Mr. Harold C. Bold of Columbia University gave a very in- 

 teresting talk on "Cytological Studies in Chlorophyceae." 



Mr. R. S. Williams, Administrative Assistant, at The New 

 York Botanical Garden gave an interesting talk on "Some Com- 

 mon Mosses and How to Collect Them." 



"The word common, as here used, might apply to those mos- 

 ses growing abundantly and widely scattered over the earth, or 

 only to those growing in the vicinity of one's home. Some of the 

 latter will be considered first. Mrs. Britton and I began collect- 

 ing mosses in The New York Botanical Garden early in No- 

 vember, 1899 and in the next few years obtained some seventy- 

 eight species, mostly common and well known over temperate 

 North America. Today, owing to grading, tramping over and 

 raking the ground and to the cutting out and burning of under- 

 brush, it probably would be difficult to find half that number 

 and a few species have certainly totally disappeared. Two of the 

 most persistent species, and two of the most widely distributed 

 of the world, for they grow abundantly in both hemispheres 

 from near the arctic to the antarctic circles, were found this 

 morning, existing between the bricks on the walk about the 

 fountain in front of the Botanical Garden Museum. They were 

 Bryum argenteum and Ceratodon purpureas, but often so de- 

 pauperate as scarcely to be recognized as mosses. A few other 

 species still surviving near by are Polytrichum commune, Mnium 

 hornum, Dicranella heteromalla, Bryum caespiticum, Weber a 

 nutans and a few hypnaceous, mostly sterile species. Of species 

 that seem to have vanished, I may mention two Sphagnums, 

 5. palustre and 5. fimbriatum and Buxbaumia aphylla. Many 

 other species common twenty-five years ago are not to be found 

 at present where they were then abundant, yet may exist in 

 some out-of-the-way nooks." 



As to some common mosses of the world, a collection of 

 about thirty species, growing at 10,000 to 14,000 feet altitude in 

 the Himalaya Mountains, included twenty species common in 

 the United States. The recent Robert Bartlett collection of mos- 



