— I04 — 



REVIEW OF MOSSES WITH HAND=LENS AND MICROSCOPE. 



By John M. Holzinger. 

 Part I of this work appeared in June of the present year. It is pub- 

 lished by the author A. J. Grout, Ph. D., at 360 Lenox Road, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

 It aims to be "a non-technical hand-book of the common mosses of the 

 northwestern United States." 



It is a pleasure to note at the outset that the paper, the printing, and 

 the figures and plates, all, are excellent. In addition to numerous original 

 figures many of the full-page illustrations for families and genera are repro- 

 duced from Bruch & Schimper's monumental work, Bryologia Europaea, 

 and from Sullivant's Icones, The chapter on life history and structure is 

 especially well illustrated with plates and figures reproduced from Schim- 

 per's " Recherches sur les Mousses." The illustrations of the glossary 

 include numerous original additions to Dixon & Jameson's Handbook of the 

 British Mosses, which is also followed in the system of classification adopted 

 by the author. Since all of these works are either inaccessible to the major- 

 ity of our moss students or else are too expensive, the reproduction of these 

 illustrations is an especially valuable feature for all for whom this handbook 

 is intended. These include not only all our moss students remote from the 

 larger universities, the libraries and herbaria of which afford the best oppor- 

 tunities, but also all teachers of botany who, while they may not wish to take 

 up bryology as a specialty, have yet offered them in this work the ready 

 means of understanding this most fascinating group of plants somewhat 

 more fully than the current general manuals of botany make possible. To 

 them the excellent diagnostic characters of families and genera, drawn from 

 the author's own working experience, will be a most welcome aid in distin- 

 guishing the more common genera. 



The first part consists of eighty-six pages of printed matter and plates; 

 the latter, like the smaller figures, are printed in with the text, and are paged 

 continuously with the printed pages. The first forty-six pages take up in 

 different chapters the discussion of classification principles, the collection of 

 mosses, mounting, methods of manipulation in their study, life his- 

 tory and structure, and the illustrated glossary. The manual proper begins 

 with page 47, the Key to the Families of Mosses occupying the next three 

 pages. In the pages following the attempt is made to enumerate and 

 describe all the mosses of the region covered. Doubtful or doubtfully iden- 

 tified forms have been advisedly omitted. 



All in all, this is the best elementary manual of mosses in any language, 

 considering both print and illustrations, it is certainly the first illustrated 

 manual offered to our young American Bryologists. Two keys will be given 

 at the end of the work, one for the fruiting mosses and the other for the 

 sterile ones. Winona, Minn. 



