314 MR. G. E. HUNT ON THE RARER MOSSES 



out during the last 15 to 20 years_, by boards of health, 

 health committees^ and officers of health, have produced no 

 perceptible improvement in the state of the public health, 

 nor checked the growing increase in the rate of mortality, 

 notwithstanding the enormous outlay they have involved, 

 and therefore that a thorough reform of our existing 

 sanitary system is urgently required. 



XXVI. Notes of the Rarer Mosses of Perthshire and 

 Braemar, By George E. Hunt, Esq. 



Read before the Microscopical and Natural History Section, Feb. ist, 1869. 



In the present day there are two widely separated classes 

 of botanists : — one consisting of those who endeavour to 

 simplify the determination of species, by uniting all that 

 have a general resemblance in their more conspicuous 

 characters ; the other of those who note the most minute 

 details of structure, and separate as a species every form 

 which can be distinguished by a definite character, how- 

 ever insignificant. In Britain the latter class prevails, at 

 least so far as Phsenogamic botany is concerned — and 

 doubtless because the field is so narrow that this is al- 

 most the only way of finding new material, so long as the 

 attention is confined to the examination and discrimina- 

 tion of British specimens ; and every record of variation 

 is of importance, as tending ultimately to show how far 

 a species may vary. This is not, to the same extent, the 

 case with Cryptogamic botany, which in some of its depart- 

 ments had, until comparatively recently, been much neg- 



