Short Notes and Queries. 



43 



several had occurred about Easington. The specimens which I have seen 

 varied slightly in colour from the locusts of 1876, and did not by any 

 means exhibit so much of a tendency to green coloration ; they were 

 brown or leaden-grey in tinge. The cause of the visitation is obvious. 

 The weather — the gloriously fine and warm sunny days of the last weeks 

 of August and the first week of September, the warmest days we have 

 had this year — just suited these insects, assisted their devolopment, and 

 facilitated their wanderings. To my mind there is just a shade of ground 

 for surmising that it is possible that the locusts breed in the East Riding, 

 if any of our members will endeavour to investigate the point, and try to 

 find the larvae. — Wm. Denison Roebuck, Leeds, Sept. 17th. 



Locust at Bradford. — A very fine specimen of the above was 

 taken in a cricket field adjoining Carlisle Road, Manningham, Sept. 6th, 

 It measured 4f inches from tip to tip of the wings, and is now in my 

 possession. — John Firth, Bradford, Sept. 15th. 



Orthodontium gracile, Wils. — In the " Revue Bryologique," 1880, page 

 84 (Sept.), the Abbe Boulay points out an unaccountable error respecting 

 the peristome of this moss, made by its discoverer the late Wm. Wilson. 



In the "Bry. Brit." we read, Outer teeth nearly twice as long 



as the narrow processes of the inner peristome." In the ''Bryol. 

 Eur." the same statement is made : Cilia duplo hreviora ; Mueller's Syn., 



is the same : peristoma denies internidimidiohreviores, whilst Schimper 



quite recently in his Syn. Muse. Eur., Ed. II., p. 389, repeats the same 

 thing : interni processus multo hreviores. M. Boulay states that the first 

 peristome of this moss, which he examined from Guipavas, shewed the 

 interior processes quite as long as the exterior teeth, at times even sur- 

 passing them, which caused him at first to doubt his determination of the 

 specimen."^ But on referring to authentic specimens, viz. : No. 677, of 

 Ilabenhorst's Bryotheca Europsea, gathered by Mr. Curnow in Cheshire, 

 he found the internal processes " terminating in long cilia equalling or 

 surpassing the external teeth." The strangest thing about it is, that, 

 Wilson's figure on pi. xlvii., is so far contrary to his diagnosis that the 



, teeth are of equal length, and in two of the three figures of the peristome 

 the internal are the longer ! Having thus had my curiosity aroused, I 

 referred to some good fruiting specimens in my herbarium,, gathered by 



I my late friend Mr. G. E. Hunt, at Alderley Edge, in 1863, and I find they 

 agree with Wilson's figure and M. Boulay's remarks. How Mr. Wilson, 

 who was generally so careful and exact in his descriptions can have made 

 such an error, is strange. The Abbe conjectures that the original speci- 

 mens must have been in an imperfect state and either not fully developed 



i or too far advanced ; and the moss being very rare, authors who have 



1 subsequently written upon it contented themselves with reproducing the 



*The specimen above referred to was gathered by M. Tanguy, Jun., on the soil of 

 , a talus at the side of the Fontaine de St. Euenan, at Larvez en Guipavas (Finisterre). 

 I This is the first time it has been gathered in France or out of England, where it has 

 ' only been recorded from Cheshire and Yorkshire. 



