—68^ 
from the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseum of Stockholm, where Swartz' herbarium 
now is. In the summer of 19 19, however, Dr. Hjalmar Moller after a first un- 
successful search finally succeeded in finding the type-specimen of Swartz 
and kindly sent it to me. It is plainly marked Phascum Muhlenbergianum 
and corresponds otherwise closely with the description. 
Astomum SulUvantii Bruch & Schimper and Astomum nitidulum Bruch & 
Schimper were published in the Astomum monograph of Bryologia Europaea 
(XLIII, 2 and 3 respectively), whose date of publication according to the careful 
researches of Dr. Barnhart was 1850. Their descriptions are very brief and 
relegated in fine print to the foot-notes and no exact locality is given, but A. 
nitidulum is characterized as growing with A. SulUvantii. Under the circum- 
stances it is but natural that bryologists have had difficulties in interpreting 
the types. C. Miiller, for example, in 1851^ supposed that both were to be found 
in No. 211 of Sullivant's Muse. Allegh., which was collected in Virginia in 
1843 ai^cl distributed (as Phascum crispum) in 1845. Mrs. Britton has however 
in her (unpublished) studies on Astomum identified as the type of A. SulUvantii 
a specimen collected by Sullivant in Ohio in 1842 labeled Phascum crispum 
and numbered 116. A drawing in the herbarium of the New York Botanical 
Garden executed by C. H. Wright, Oct. 21, 1890, from the Schimper herbarium 
at Kew represents this in fact as the type. Sullivant in his Musci and Hepaticae 
of the United States (1856, p. 16) mentions Phascum nitidulum as occuring only 
in central Ohio, which would tend to confirm the idea that the type of both 
specimens was from Ohio. Wright's drawing of A. nitidulum from the Schimper 
herbarium is on the other hand taken from a specimen collected by James at 
Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1868, which is of course not the type, and it would 
appear from the original statement in Bryologia Europaea that this species was 
really based upon some aberrant plant growing with the type-specimen of A. 
SulUvantii. The specimen in Sullivant & Lesquereux, Muse. Bor. Amer. Exsicc, 
No. 36 (also 2nd ed.. No. 47) as A. nitidulum (locality not given) might have 
some value as representing vSullivant's idea of what the species was, and it 
has been the working basis for the separation of this species by North American 
bryologists. It does not however show two characters ascribed to the original, 
both in the Bryologia Europaea and by Sullivant, viz., the rather long seta 
and the differentiated line of operculation, but is a small form with more deeply 
pigmented capsule, which appears to fall entirely within the limits of variation 
of A. SulUvantii, as do nearly all specimens since called A. nitidulum. 
The late Prof. L. W. Riddle shortly before his death looked very carefully 
through the Sullivant herbarium with reference to the type of this species, 
as well as of A. SulUvantii, and found that a small specimen of A. nitidulum had 
been sent to Sullivant by Schimper, but had fallen from the bit of paper in 
which it was enclosed and is irretrievably lost. Sullivant 's note reads : ' ' Schimper 
in letter dated April 1850 says in specimens I sent him marked ' No, 116, Ohio, 
* Synopsis, 11, 519. 
