844° ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO BRITISH MOSSES; 
on others. That they have not yet arrived at any common basis of 
action has been sufficiently shown above, and I have dealt with this 
more fully in a paper in Natural Science for October, 1892 (pp. 610- 
623)—a paper which I mention here because, not having received 
any separate copies for distribution, I was unable to call the atten- 
tion of botanists to it, and it has thus been overlooked by those who 
study nomenclature: notably by Dr. Kuntze, in the third part of 
his Revisio, of which a notice will soom appear in these pages. 
e 
results of the action of the younger American botanists will be the 
dition to our already overburdened synonymy of a vast number of 
absolutely useless names, many of them shown to be untenable by 
those who are responsible for their invention. 
- I had intended to notice two or three other matters connected 
with nomenclature, but these must be deferred for the present. 
JAMES BRITTEN. 
_ ‘Waar is the best book on Mosses?”” We have often had this 
question put to us, and as often have found it impossible to answer 
offhand. So much depends upon the requirements of the person 
Usually i of taki 
bryologist to increase the initial outlay, and buy some three or four 
books, the relative merits and demerits of which we then proceed to 
indicate to him. 
One of the books which we have most strenuously recommended: 
por anaed the Hylocomiums, Mniuwn undulatum, &c., which,” 
characters “as can be o served even in barren speci ae i 
cimens,’”’ made it 
possible for the student to speedil refer alm 3 itis 
its proper genus and spadian: 4 iepedecr pears: 
aving launched the Key, the enterprising author set to work 
