418 The Side-fruiting Mosses. 



smooth and erect, but slightly recurved at the apex ; the fruit- 

 stalk slender, smooth, reddish, scarcely half an inch long, and 

 bearing a small, ovate -oblong-, dull reddish-brown capsule; the 

 peristome pale yellowish, and, probably from being over-ripe, 

 imperfect ; but the presence of this one capsule is sufficient to 

 establish the hitherto doubtful season of fruiting, which we are 

 inclined to fix for the end of February or early in April ; and 

 the lofty head of Ben Lawers, in Perthshire, can no longer 

 claim to be the only British nurse of the species. 



On the authority of Dr. Beach, Leckhampton Hill also 

 possesses near its summit Cylindrothecium Montagnei, Mon- 

 tague's cylinder-moss, another of the pleurocarps, for which 

 Ben Lawers is famed. And, on the same authority, Clima- 

 cium dendroides, Hooker and Taylor's Hypnum dendroides, 

 the marsh tree-moss, is to be found in a marsh at Puckham 

 Scrubs, about four or five miles from Cheltenham. This 

 species was named Climacium by Weber and Mohr, from 

 Kklfxa^, a stair or ladder, in allusion to the barred appearance 

 of the inner peristome ; not only in its tree-like aspect, but in 

 several other particulars it differs from the Hypnums proper. 



The shrubby Thamnium, or Isothecium alopecaritm, the fox- 

 tail frond-moss, with its miniature tree-like form, and dendroid 

 stem, naked below, may be found in Gloucestershire, but in 

 vain shall we look there for the capsules, either in October, as 

 given by Hooker, or in November, as given by Wilson, for its 

 fruiting season ; the writer, however, met with some square 

 yards of ground at the foot of a fir-tree grove, at the head of 

 Longfords Lake, near Avening, covered with it in luxuriant 

 profusion, and freely fruiting, January the 21st, 1858," some 

 specimens having twenty-five and more capsules, some of them 

 having their oblique long-beaked lids still on, while others 

 had dropped their lids, and were exhibiting their pale double 

 peristome, very like that of a Hypnum, to which genus it Avas 

 formerly assigned by Linna3us and others, but from which it 

 lias been very properly separated on account of striking 

 differences. 



Space will not admit of further dotails, but" wo trust that 

 those of our readers who have followed us thus far, will be 

 induced to enlarge the sphere of their pleasures by investi- 

 gating for themselves this too-neglected department of na- 

 ture's economy. 



