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the first screen and you finish the moss from the top. After washing both 

 :sides place the moss on any absorbing pad, and when the water has been ab- 

 sorbed it is ready for final arrangement and drying. 



The dirt may be thus removed from patches of protonema bearing small 

 mosses like Ephemerum leaving it like a piece of fine green veiling, but minute 

 gregarious mosses must be washed with great care on a fine screen. 



The apparatus can be used in any bathroom, by doing the washing over a 

 basin or other wide dish and emptying the basin into a bucket as soon as it 

 gets full. After standing a few minutes the water can be decanted from the 

 mud into the water closet bowl, and at the end of the work the mud carried 

 out and emptied into the ash can. I have thus used mine over the stationary 

 tubs in the laundry. 



Old herbarium specimens can be cleansed almost as well as fresh ones by 

 iirst softening them thoroughly in a basin of warm water; but! if fruited and 

 the operculum is still on the capsules, remember!! that if you wet them they 

 will probably cast their operculi, hence it is best not to wash or wet operculate 

 mosses after they have once become dry. 



Sterile or non-operculated mosses will not be injured by the process. 



Dayton, Ohio. 



COLLECTING MOSSES IN FLORIDA 

 A. J. Grout 



It was my good fortune to spend Holy Week in April, 191 1, in Florida, and 

 my still better fortune to spend it with one of our members, Mr. Samuel C. Hood, 

 at Orange City. Mr. Hood has for some time been in charge of the government 

 food and drug plant experimental farm at Orange City and knows the ways 

 of the country thoroughly and, in addition, he put himself, his motor boat and 

 his horse at my disposal. This made it easy to accomplish much more than 

 would have been possible otherwise. My plans included a visit to another 

 member who has done notable work in bryology, Mr. Severin Rapp, at Sanford, 

 but unavoidable circumstances prevented. 



There are two quite distinct sets of conditions, each of which produces a 

 moss flora peculiar to itself. The greater portion of the country in this vicinity 

 consists of sand plains, originally covered with long leaf pine, but now largely grown 

 up to scrub of various sorts. Mosses in this area are few and usually scanty. 



Along the St. Johns River and its tributaries with their low lying mucky 

 shores and innumerable connecting swamps and "dead rivers" or lagoons, there 

 is a rich moss flora of an entirely different type. 



In the sand plains one finds an abundance of Ditrichum, especially D. palli- 

 dum (Schreb) Hampe. and Weisia viridula (L.) Hedw., much of which is the var. 

 longiseta (L. & J.), for common northern species are often so modified here as to 

 be scarcely recognizable yet the intergrading forms between the north and south 



