91 
HANDBOOK OF MOSSES * 
This very handy and useful little Handbook is really a wonderful 
shilling’s worth, and gives an excellent introduction to the study 
of mosses. Any one who knows what a careful botanist Mr. Bag- 
nail is would naturally expect from him a most trustworthy guide 
in his favourite pursuit. Amongst Bryologists, certainly, there will 
be very few who do not know our author by name or correspondence, 
and those who know him personally will feel pleased that he has 
overcome his diffidence and reserve so far as to publish this little 
“Handbook” for beginners. An enumeration of the successive 
chapters will give a fair synopsis of the work : Appliances and 
Material Required for the Study ; Development ; Moss Habitats ; 
Classification ; The Geographical Distribution of Mosses ; Culti- 
vation; Uses; Preparing Specimens for the Cabinet and Her- 
barium. 
When we add that there are 39 woodcut illustrations, that the 
paper and printing is good, and the matter excellent, no one can 
hesitate to order copies, and present them to youths of both sexes, 
so as to induce a few, even if only a few, of the rising generation to 
acquire a taste for, and a desire to pursue still further, the study 
of mosses. 
A NEW BRITISH LICHEN. 
By the Rev. W. Johnson. 
In recently examining a gathering of lichens made in Weardale, 
Durham, some time ago, I had the pleasure of turning up the fol- 
lowing new species, which, as such, seems distinct and definite in 
its individual characteristics : — 
Lecanora Weardalensis, Johns. 
Thallus determinate, thin, smooth, rimulose, virescenti-cinera- 
scent ; apothecia immersed in thallus, then emergent, fuscous, with 
prominent depressed proper margin; thalline margin more or less 
circumscised ; hymenium fuscescent ; paraphyses slender, spores 
eight, rather large, oblongo-ellipsoid, simple, colourless ; gelatina 
hymenia blue with iodine, then vinoso-fulvescent. Thallus K — C — . 
On sandstone in subalpine places. Rare. Lanehead, Weardale, 
Durham, 1879. 
* “ Handbook of Mosses,” by James E. Bagnall, A.L.S. Cloth, with 
cuts ; 96 pp. Swan Sonnenschein and Co. 
