24 
BRACHYTHECIUM SALEBROSUM. Hoffm. 
The late Mr. G. Hunt, of Manchester, and myself, took some 
pains years ago to ascertain, if possible, the reality of veritable 
B. salebrosum , Hoffm., having been found in Britain, but we failed 
to get satisfactory evidence. 
It is patent to all, even to amateur Bryologists as ourselves, that 
B. glareosum , Bruch., B. mildeanum , Schpr., and B. compestre , 
Bruch., have been successively regarded as forms of B. salebrosum , 
Hoffm. 
Although I have strong doubts of the value of B. mildeanum as 
a distinct species from the lax forms of the variable true B. sale- 
brosum , I leave to others to decide that knotty point. 
I do not think many will dispute B. glareosum to rank as a truly 
distinct species — its long leaves, with twisted filiform points, sepa- 
rating it by an obvious character. 
Now, the localities cited by Wilson, in his u Bryologia Britan- 
nica,” 1855, p. 338, are for B. salebrosum , Loch of Forfar, Drum- 
mond ; Castle Howard, Mr. Spruce ; Sussex, Mr. Mitten. 
On enquiring, Mr. Hunt found the evidence as to these first 
two was very shadowy, and Mr. Mitten has abandoned his Sussex 
habitat. 
We have in Sussex B. mildeanum , verum , but extremely local, 
and only barren, in a narrow belt on the northern base of our chalk 
downs, and Mr. Mitten told me he had gathered the same on the 
coast west of Brighton. 
Of the true specific value of Sussex forms of B. campestre , I 
can say nothing. My fertile plants Mr. Mitten pronounced iden- 
tical with his ; but Mr. Hunt regarded these as a rigid form of B. 
mildeanum ; perhaps from growing principally on clay, and making 
the outline of the leaf an isosceles triangle, of which the base is 
one-third to one-fourth of its length. 
On Ben Lawers, in Perthshire, in July, 1874, I gathered a 
cEespitose blackened Brachythecium , with somewhat incurved 
branches. I am indebted to Dr. Braithwaite for pointing out 
its identity with B. salebrosum , and he has it also from the same 
mountain. My plant occurred near Creag a Bhuic, on a shady 
rock, with Weissia crispula and Pseudoleskea atrovirens , and at an 
elevation of about 3,000 feet. 
This Ben Lawers form is very near a plant I found last year on 
rocks close to Lac d’Espingo, in the Pyrenees, 6,152 feet. A 
locality given by Spruce for Camptothecium aureum , Lagasa, which 
I could not find. A singular habitat for C. aureum , a purely 
Southern plant, said to be abundant at Madrid, but one would not 
have supposed it should have been found at Lac d’Espingo, almost 
a glacial lake. 
Brighton. 
G. Davies. 
