Report on Botany. 



41 



found, making over sixty species good for food now known 

 to occur in the state. One of the added species, Agaricus 

 abortivus, was not before known to be edible, but has been 

 found to be by actual experiment. 



It will be observed that but two species of mosses have 

 been added to those formerly known. This is not so much 

 due to any lack of activity in this direction as it is to the 

 carefulness with which the mosses have been previously 

 sought. When we consider that three hundred and twenty- 

 three distinct species had already been reported, nearly all 

 of which are represented in the State Herbarium by good 

 specimens, and that the whole number of species and va- 

 rieties reported by Sullivant and Lesquereux in their second 

 edition of Musci Boreali Americani, for the whole United 

 States is only five hundred and thirty-six, we can readily 

 imagine that the single state of New York which is already 

 known to possess more than half the species yet found in 

 the whole United States, should not have many more 

 species to be detected within her limits. If we add to 

 those mosses already reported, the two recently discovered 

 and also Polytrichum strictum, which has before been con- 

 sidered a variety of P. juniperinum, but which is now 

 deemed a good species by English botanists, and we think 

 justly so, we have for the total number of mosses of New 

 York now known three hundred and twenty-six. 



Two or three years ago some of our agricultural papers 

 contained notices of a new strawberry, Fragaria Gittmani, 

 which was brought from far-off Mexico, cultivated and 

 found to be prolific, yielding fruit of pleasant flavor and 

 producing it throughout the season. Plants were offered 

 for sale at a comparatively high price by some of our west- 

 ern dealers, who gave them the name of the everbearing 

 Mexican strawberry. It is now known that we have an 

 "everbearing strawberry" among our own native plants. 

 The little Fragaria vesca, our common wood strawberry 



[Trans. vii.~\ 6 * 



