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NEW AND INTEEESTINa SOUTH AFEICAN MOSSES. 
By H. N. Dixon, M.A., F.L.S. 
(With Plates XI and XII.) 
I have during recent years received a considerable number of mosses- 
from different collectors in South Africa, principally from Prof. Wager^ 
of Transvaal University College, Pretoria, and a considerable collection,, 
including some very interesting plants, made in the neighbourhood of * 
Tjumie, in the Highlands of Cape Province, by the Rev. Jas. Henderson, of 
Lovedale, his son Donald Henderson, and other members of his family, and 
sent to me by the Rev. D. Lillie. More recently Mr. T. E. Sim has sent 
me a considerable number of specimens collected by himself and his friends,, 
and also comprising a good many novelties. These and a few others are 
included in this paper. 
I have not confined myself to the description of new species ; in addition 
to these and a few others calling for special notice, I have included notices 
of other species for the sake of distribution records. I have not intentionally 
included such as are obviously common or widely distributed species ; but 
the distribution of even the commoner mosses in South Africa can hardly 
be said to be worked out at all systematically, and one who has not 
collected on the spot may easily be misled as to facts of distribution, and 
may, I hope, be as easily forgiven for unwittingly including some records 
which to South African bryologists may seem superfluous. 
Prof. Wager in his ' Check-List of the Mosses of South Africa ' has 
given a few localities for some species, but anything like a conspectus of the 
moss-flora of South Africa has not yet appeared, and is greatly to be 
desired. Mr. Sim has laid the foundation for this in his * Handbook of 
the Bryophyta of South Africa,' Parts I and II, dealing so far principally 
with the genera ; it is much to be hoped that he may be able, by the publica- 
tion of the third part, to bring the work to such a completion that the 
student of South African bryology may have a real compendium of the 
mosses of this region with their geographical distribution as far as it is 
known. 
For such a work one of the essential preliminaries is to clear up 
