MTJSCI PIUETERin. 293 



Eagle Crag, and other places in W. Yorkshire (Nowell, 1847); 

 and from near Killarney (Taylor and Wilson). Taylor said he 

 had long known it, and should call it Leskea prostrata n. sp., feeling 

 confident it would prove a near ally of L. polyantha (Pylaisia) ; but 

 he did not find me an Irish specimen of it until August, 1847, 

 when he gathered it at Turk Waterfall. I told him it was exactly 

 my H. Borrerianum ; but as English bryologists were at that j>eriod 

 still guided chiefly by the Hedwigian canons, founded on the pre- 

 eminence of characters derived from the peristome, I said 1 was not 

 unwilling to adopt his name for it, especially if the peristome 

 should prove to be that of a Leskea, i.e., with the inner membrane 

 destitute of cilia. So, for some time, it passed among us as 



"Leskea prostrata, Tayl." 



About the same time Wilson picked a moss out of Taylor's 

 gatherings at Turk Waterfall, which he called H. lapidinum, MSS. 

 This proved a mixture of H. Borrerianurn and H. depression, Bruch, 

 and was afterwards quoted in ' Bryologia Britannica ' (1855) as a 

 variety of the latter. I had already, in May, 1846, by the help of 

 specimens in Schimper's ' Stirpes Normales,' made out //. de- 

 pressum in our Yorkshire woods, growing quite as abundantly on a 

 calcareous, as H. Borrerianum on a siliceous base. 



In 1847, when I was working up my Exsiccata of Pyrenean 

 Mosses, I found, intermixed with other species gathered near 

 . Bagneres-de-Luchon (Bois de Sajust and Cascade des Parisians) 

 a moss without fruit, which I could only consider a slender form 

 of H. Borrerianurn; and I afterwards described the male in- 

 florescence, under " Hyjmum elegms" in my paper on the Mosses 

 of the Pyrenees (Annals of Nat. Hist., &c, 1849). In 1851 the 

 same moss was found in fruit by J. Miiller (of Geneva), in southern 

 Tyrol, and the much longer, subcylindrical capsule, constricted 

 under the mouth when dry, with the rostellate lid, proved it to be 

 a distinct species— since published by Schimper under the name of 

 Ploffiothecium Mullericmum (Synops., ed, i. ; ed. ii., p. 698). I do 

 not remember giving specimens of this moss to Montague, but if I 

 did so they were probably seen also by C. Miiller, and mistaken by 

 him (as they had been by me) for a slender form of H. Borrerianum. 

 The true type of the latter was, however, both for C. Miiller and 

 myself, the moss gathered at Tunbridge Wells, as I have already 

 stated. 



Of the true H. Borrerianurn I gathered too little in the Pyrenees 

 to include it in my sets, but I had drawn up a full description of it 

 for my paper on Pyrenean Mosses, to be read to the Botanical 

 Society of Edinburgh, when, towards the close of 1848, Mr. 

 Wilson informed me°he had found, in Turner's herbarium, fertile 

 specimens of our moss, gathered near Bantry long years since by 

 Miss Hutchins ; that he had compared them with the original 

 specimen of //. elegant in Hooker's herbarium, and that they were 

 undoubtedly the same species. I was then preparing for my 

 journey to South America, and had little leisure for reconsidering 

 the matter ; but I possessed a small scrap of H. eler/ans, gathered 



ty Menzies at Nootka Sound, and given me by Dr. Taylor in 1842, 



