292 PLANT LIFE OF ALABAMA. 
To the Arctic region extend 22 species, of which the following are 
North American: 
Sphagnum imbricatum. Polytrichum capillare. 
Sphagnum cuspidatum torreyanum, Climacium americanum. 
Sphagnum papillosum. Brachythecium oxycladon. 
Sphagnum medium. Raphidostegium recurvans. 
The rest of the species are widely distributed in the cooler regions of 
the Old World. 
Of transcontinental species which on the west coast range from 
California to British Columbia 31 occur in Alabama, of which only the 
following are confined to this continent: 
Brachythecium oxycladon. Eurhynchium hians. 
Campylium hispidulum. Raphidostegium recurvans. 
The others are almost all cosmopolitan wanderers throughout the 
cooler temperate region of the Northern Hemisphere, many of them 
found in Europe. Alabama has 26 species in common with the latter 
continent, mostly erratic in temperate zones of the globe. 
Of anomalous distribution Brachythecium campestre is a striking 
example, this species being known only from the White Mountains of 
New England and the Rocky Mountain region from Colorado to British 
Columbia. 
REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION. 
In no other part of the State are mosses found in greater variety and 
abundance than in the section of the mountain region which embraces 
the Warrior table-land and thé southern spurs of the Cumberland 
Mountains abutting upon the Tennessee Valley. The manifold differ- 
ences in the topography and geology of this section of the State give 
rise to a diversity in conditions of climate, exposure, and soil which 
afford the peculiar habitat to which each species finds itself best 
adapted, and to which it clings more tenaciously than most plants of a 
higher order; for, as Professor Lesquereux, the close student of the 
moss world, aptly remarks, these humble and apparently useless beings 
have their geological and lithological preferences far better marked 
than any other kind of vegetable. 
The species prevailing in the northern part of the State at an eleva- 
tion exceeding 1,500 feet are mostly the same as found in the Middle 
and Northeastern States. On the lower terraces and in the valleys 
Southern forms intermingle with those of higher latitudes. For 
example, at the falls of Black Creek near Gadsden, 1,000 feet altitude, 
the Northern Fissidens adiantoides is associated with the tropical Fissi- 
dens polypodioides, and on the Cumberland table-land in Jackson and 
Morgan counties the Southern Sphagnum macrophyllum, 8. cyclophyllum, 
and S. molle muelleri, with S. recurvum vars. and 8. cuspidatum torrey- 
