ON A NEW iECHMEA FROM TOBAGO, 15 



structures, we are safe in considering that they have been there 

 buried a goodly number of centuries. They have evidently been 

 so long buried as to have undergone the first stages, at any rate, 

 of fossilization, and they are the most ancient specimens of 

 mosses that have come under my cognisance. For many years I 

 have been hankering after a fossil moss, but have as yet come no 

 nearer than these. I have seen specimens so labelled from Burnt- 

 island which are not mosses at all — with which conclusion, by the 

 way, Prof. Williamson, F.R.S., entirely agrees, and there can be 

 no better authority on those beds, — and I have seen specimens 

 from the " Halifax hard bed,'' in the coal measures, but these are 

 also more than doubtful. I have seen specimens from other 

 localities as well, but to all such I must append the same verdict. 



It would be interesting to be informed whether any undoubted 

 specimens have been found in similar localities or in other for- 

 mations, either in this or other countries ; and if so, what they 

 are. I have seen various lists drawn up by Prof. Heer of the 

 ciyptogamic plants from various localities, and from older deposits 

 than the one above named, but in none of them have I seen any 

 mention of mosses or their allies. Can any one supply information 

 on this subject ? 



ON A NEW jECHMEA FROM TOBAGO. 



By J. G. Baker, F.R.S. 



In my recent synopsis of the genus /Eclimea I described (' Journ. 

 Bot.,' 1879. p. 133) a very curious new species under the name of 

 Mchmea dichlamydea from a single incomplete specimen in the 

 herbarium of the British Museum, gathered long ago in the island 

 of Tobago. This present summer Mr. Louis 0. Meyer, who had 

 been occupied for some time previously working at the Kew 

 Herbarium, took an engagement in that island, and I asked him to 

 try and rediscover it. This he soon accomplished, and he has 

 also found there two other species, one of them the widely-dispersed 

 M. odor a, and the other new to science. 



The leaves of Mr. Meyer's specimen of M. dichlamydea were 

 unfortunately destroyed by an accident, but he describes it as being 

 similar in general habit to its allies, with a tuft of large lorate or 

 lanceolate leaves in a sessile rosette, and a drooping inflorescence 

 borne on a peduncle shorter than the leaves. In this specimen the 

 panicle is a foot and a half long, and consists of about twenty 

 oblong-deltoid dense heads borne on ascending peduncles varying 

 from an inch and a half to four inches in length, which are 

 subtended at the base by red-tinted lanceolate scariose primary 

 bracts. The petals are bright violet -purple, but the lanceolate 

 lamina, which protrudes beyond the bract and sepals, is not more 

 than \-\ in. long, so that it would not be a species of much value 

 from a horticultural point of view. 



The new species falls into the section Pironneava^ in the neigh- 

 bourhood of sE. anau&ta. Bftker. which is axpel1ftnt.lv fiornvprl hv 



