THE SPHAGNACEA OR PEAT-MOSSES 
OF 
EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA. 
CHAPTER I. 
LITERATURE OF THE GENUS SPHAGNUM. 
THE name odayvos was first used by the ancient botanists, Theo- 
phrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny, to indicate certain species of 
Salvia and Lichen; but as a genus of mosses Sphagnum was 
established by DiLuentus in his first work, Catalogus Plantarum 
sponte circa Gissam nascentium (1719), though not in the restricted 
sense as now understood, since he included in it various other 
-mosses which had no evident pedicels, as Grimmia apocarpa, 
fHedwigia ciliata, Cryphea, &c. 
Before his time, however, Loset had figured a true species— 
S. acutifolium—in his [cones Stirpium, ii. p. 242 (1591), under the 
name of Muscus terrestris vulgaris ; and a century later PLUKENET 
figured S. cymbifolium, in his Phytographia, as Muscus palustris 
in ericetis nascens floridus, and VAILLANT, in his Botanicon Paristense 
(1727), also gives figures of the same. 
Dittentus, in the third edition of Ray’s Synopsis Stirpium 
Lritannicarum (1724), adopts the genus, with the observation, 
“This moss is like none of the terrestrial, but has a peculiar aspect, 
nor is it produced anywhere else but in bogs and marshes.” In 
his celebrated Historia Muscorum (1741) he introduced sixteen 
species of Sphagnum, but the only genuine are S. palustre molle 
deflexum, squamis cymbiformibus = S. cymbifolium, and S. palustre 
molle deflecum, squamis capillacets with a var. B fluctans = S. acuti- 
folium + cuspidatum., 
Linnzus, in his Species Plantarum (1753), still retained 
Cryphea heteromalla as Sphagnum arboreum, and recognized only 
B 
