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A REMARKABLE FORM OF FUNARIA HYGROMETRICA. 
H. N. Dixon, M.A., F.L. S. 
Cases of teratology in mosses do not seem common, and as far as they 
have come under my notice they appear usually to belong to the sporophyte. 
In the oophytic generation I have a leaf of Campylopus which is forked, 
nerve and all, for half its length, and in Barbula convoluta var. Sardoa I 
have frequently found the hyaline apical cell bifid or double. These appear 
to be cases of pure teratology of a more or less pathological kind. The 
structure which I am about to describe while equally abnormal is totally dif- 
ferent in its nature, and possibly functional rather than pathological. 
Among some material of Physcomitrella patens sent me by Mr. Evans 
for examination, collected on half dried mud at the upper end of Tonduff 
Reservoir, in the Pentland Hills of Midlothian, by Mr. W. E. Evans, in Oct., 
1908, was a taller Funarioid moss which on examination proved to be the $ 
plant of Funaria hygrometrica. The antheridia were approximately ma- 
ture, and the lateral 9 shoot was just beginning to be developed from the 
axil of a lower leaf.* The plants were normal so far as I could ascertain, with 
the exception of the margins of the perigonial bracts, which exhibited a 
remarkable, and in all the material sent a constant structure. 
The bract of the flower in F. hygrometrica so far as I am aware pre- 
sents normally the same variation in marginal denticulation as that of the 
ordinary foliage leaves, i. e., they are usually moderately denticulate at the 
apex, ranging from quite entire to distinctly toothed. Thus most systema- 
tic works simply describe them as “denticulate at apex,’’ and they are so 
figured in the Bry. Europse. Wilson (Bry. Britannica) describes them as 
“ denticulate at the apex, and still more evidently so at the base;” and this is 
the only description I have found in which anything like an approach is 
hinted at to the peculiar structure of the bracts of the Tonduff plant, and 
certainly does not represent the usual condition of the bracts in F. hygromet- 
rica , which are generally entire or nearly so in the lower half. 
In the Tonduff plant the bracts presented a very striking appearance, 
the margins throughout almost their whole length being furnished with 
closely set and often double serratures, forming a very remarkable and 
pretty fringe or frill (cf. Fig. 1). The structure was best marked on the two 
or three innermost bracts, but was present in a less marked degree on the 
succeeding ones, the outermost only, like the stem leaves, being of the normal 
character, entire, or only slighly toothed towards apex. At first sight the 
serratures reminded one of the double row of teeth in Catharinea or in the 
Bi-serratse section of Mnium , only with the teeth much more obtuse (cf. Fig. 
2); closer examination however showed the resemblance to be illusive, the 
structure being quite different and more complex. The twin teeth in Cath- 
arinea and Mnium spring from two adjacent cells of the thickened limb or 
border, and could scarcely, it may be presumed, be developed from a unistratose 
border. In the Funaria the effect is in part produced by a row of turgid 
marginal cells, each spreading out from a narrow base into a sort of hammer- 
*Cf. Boodle, Annals of Botany, Vol. XX, No. LXXIX, July, 1906. 
