NOTE ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MUSGL 



By F. Buchain-an White, M.D., F.L.S. 



I READ my friend Mr. Hobkirk's note on this subject [page 84] with 

 much pleasure, and though I have long ceased the active study of 

 mosses (one can't do everything !), I am tempted to say what I know 

 on the matter, the more especially as Mr. Hobkirk asks for inform- 

 ation. 



Taking the records of mosses that have any claim to be entitled 

 " fossil " or " sub-fossil," in the order of their geological age, and 

 beginning with the youngest, some of the mosses that are preserved 

 in various of our peat-beds will come first. Generally the soft con- 

 stituents of peat are so decayed and broken up, that it is impossible 

 to say what these have specifically been, but in some cases they are 

 sufficiently well preserved to be determined. For example, Mr. 

 Skertchley, in his " Fenland," mentions the occurrence of Hypnum 

 fluitans beneath three or four feet of peat, in Norfolk, and is inclined 

 10 think that the age thereof has been much under-estimated. 



Perhaps not older than this Norfolk Hypnum fluitans, and quite 

 possibly dating from as recent a period as post-Roman times, come 

 the mosses of the Lochlee " crannog." Mr. Hobkirk will perhaps 

 deprecate this attempt to rob him of his long-sought fossil moss, but, 

 in view of the other " finds " at the crannog, including various 

 metallic implements, it is evidently a comparatively recent structure, 

 and may even be as I have said, of post-Roman date. As I do not 

 pretend to be a geologist to any greater extent than every naturalist 

 should be, I ought perhaps to say that for all the geological state- 

 ments put lorward in this paper I have the eminent authority of Dr. 

 James Geikie. 



Much older than the above are some mosses found by me in an old 

 peat-bed on the banks of the Tay, near Perth. These mosses are 

 Thuyidium tamariscinum and what appears to be Hypnum cuspidatum. 

 These I exhibited at the Dunkeld Conference (1877) of the Crypto- 

 gamic Society of Scotland, but I think that I have not otherwise 

 recorded their occurrence. The peat-bed in question is very extensive, 

 and lies under a varying depth of carse-clay, the depth at the place 

 where I found the mosses being fifteen or twenty feet. Along with 

 the mosses were remains of various higher plants, such as oak, pine, 

 ISalix, seeds of Menyanthes^ and stems of Scirpus, &c. There were also 

 N. S., YoL. v.— Feb., 1880. 



