— 9i — 
Scotsman, and also formed an organization for collecting and preparing the moss 
for use in Edinburgh. The British War Office accepted sphagnum pads as 
“official” dressings in February, 1916, and such dressings have grown in popu- 
larity until in the summer of 1918 Scotland alone has been asked, to supply 
4,000,000 pads per month. In America, Dr. J. B. Porter, McGill University, 
Montreal, began work with surgical sphagnum in 1916, an organization was 
effected under the Canadian Red Cross, and in January, 1918, the British War 
Office asked Canada for 20,000,000 pads. The National Red Cross of America 
later took up the idea, giving the Seattle Chapter a preliminary order for 50,000 
pads in March, 1918. 
In collecting sphagnum for surgical dressings a small handful at a time 
should be taken, shaken lightly to free it of sticks, etc., the water gently squeezed 
out if wet, then put in a bag. The moss is sometimes usable to considerable 
depth — the beginning of partial decay at the lower end of the stem determining 
the limit. The moss is then spread out to dry and later is sorted, preferably 
before entirely dry, otherwise it will have to be moistened again. Prof. Hotson 
gives a detailed account of the method of preparation of the American dressing. 
Briefly stated, this dressing consists of a piece of Zorbik or Scot tissue (wood- 
pulp paper) on which is placed a layer of sphagnum and then a thin layer of 
non-absorbent cotton, then the edges of the tissue are folded over these and 
another layer of cotton placed over the fold. This pad is enclosed in a piece of 
gauze with the folds on the cotton side of the pad and the ends folded in “muff- 
wise.” The British pad is simply a flat bag of English “long-cloth” filled with 
a layer of moss and sewed shut. O. E. J. 
The Mosses collected by the Smithsonian African Expedition, 1939- 
1910 2 — Under this title, H. N. Dixon publishes an annotated list of the eighty- 
three numbers of specimens of mosses collected on the African expedition by 
Dr. Edgar A. Mearns, the actual number of species being forty-eight. “As 
would be expected in the tropical region of Africa, the bulk of them were at 
high altitudes, only seven numbers being below 2,000 meters, five of these at 
1,350 meters, the remaining two at 1,950 meters. Of the rest, the largest pro- 
portion (between 65 and 70), came from the ‘giant heath zone’ of Mt. Kenia, 
at about 3,630 meters.” Only eight species were in fruit. 
Dixon discusses at some length the questions of plant geography involved, 
the relationships of this alpine African moss flora being, for the most part, with 
that of the arctic and cold temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. Many 
of the species are dioicous or sterile and thus not so likely to have arrived at 
their African station by a chance distribution of spores, and the author concludes 
“that a more continuous land area under colder and more hygrophytic condi- 
tions than Engler admits 3 is postulated by the known facts, and that the prac- 
2 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 69 : (No. 12): 1-28. PI 1 & 2. Oct. 8, 1918. 
3 Engler, A. Plants of the North Temperate Zone in their transition to the high mountains 
of t opical Africa. Annals of Botany 18 : 523-540. 1904. 
