LEJEUNEA HOLTI, A NEW HEPATIC FROM KILLARNEY. 75 
Britain and dispersed —— its western shores, we have first to 
consider how far it may have been affected by means of spores. It 
has been rashly taken nee granted that there is no assignable limit 
s of i 
or rarely felt. Moisture, shade, and a quiet a sencogiae re are essential 
to the existence of a — majority of the species. The sheltered 
position of the Killarney basin is well known. The three most 
prolific localities fos" mosses I have explored in the Andes are . 
notable for the almost perpetual calm that reigns there; and o 
of them is not a hollow, but a ridge, the lowest point of whose sea 
is 9000 feet above the sea. It runs east and west, and at its eastern 
extremity subsides abruptly to the eonfiuanoe of two rapid rivers, 
with great violence ascend the stony and bushy slope the 
wind gradually moderates, until in the last thousand feet we find 
ourselves in a wood where the only sound heard is usually that of 
the drip from the leaves of the trees, in whose tops the mist, or 
cloud, seems permanently hung. It may well be understood how 
mosses and hepatics abound there, and in three years that I fre- 
quently visited this spot I never felt more than the gentlest breeze, 
—oftenest none at all,—so that it well — its native name, 
“‘ Guayra-pata,” i.e., edge, or margin, of the wind.* 
onsider, secondly, that the spores, albeit. so minute, are often 
=~ enough to sink in ere a oe not, therefore a — 
in suspension in still air, or in air agitated by a gentle 
a gale, not only the spores seed entire pnts might be whirled lets 
and deposited possibly at a great distance. We can conceive of 
spores, or mosses, being in this way baa foo a narrow sea, but 
not over an ocean. Seeds of various phanero ms, furnished wi 
spores of ferns, mosses, &c., are dispersed is in the plumage, feet, 
and beaks of birds, and pra and) i in the fur of animals. In 1852, 
* There are indeed a few mosses which prefer exposed sites, where they cling 
to rocks or walls, more rarely to earth, in: dense ufts or patches, contenting 
i : nt 
themselves with a precarious supply of moisture, w f 
enables them to store up against short periods of drought. These are main] 
Grimmie a the former abound exceedingly in the Pyrenees, the 
latter in the Andes, especially in the nearly treeless parts of those mountains. 
e capsule: 3, E of y Orthotricha, seem to eject the 
main part of their spores in a mass, Which may germinate where it first falls; 
or he rolled waters, Or conveyed in the plumage of birds, to a 
distance, nop does not _ disintegrate: thus giving rise to a cushion-like tuft 
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ceuamen and the more nearly toa the supply the greater will be their 
luxuriance and sane Bhai trees, rocks, or clouds, is scarcely less 
