A LIST OF 
THE MOSSES OF THE NORTH-EAST OF IRELAND, 
By SAMUEL ALEX. STEWART, 
Fellow of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh ; Hon. Assoc, oj the 
Belfast Nat. Hist, and Phil. Soc. 
The district referred to here comprises the counties of Down and Antrim, 
with a small portion of the county of Derry adjacent, a district presenting a 
great variety of contour, and a very considerable range in the rocks that come 
to the surface. The county of Down consists mainly of Silurian slates and 
grits, with protruded granite that rises to a height of between 2,000 and 3,000 
feet in the Mourne range. Antrim is celebrated for its great basaltic plateau, 
which extends also into Derry, and has an area of more than 1,000 square miles 
of surface. Hard Chalk usually underlies the basalt, and is in many places 
succeeded by thin beds of Greensand, Lias, Keuper marls, and New Red 
Sandstone. Metamorphic rocks, and sedimentary rocks of the Palaeozoic series, 
also occur extensively in Antrim and Derry, while superficial deposits, consist- 
ing of clay, sand, and gravel, of Quaternary age, frequently overlie and obscure 
the lower beds. The coast line measures about 1 70 miles, a very favourable 
circumstance for the bryologist. 
A good deal of attention has been bestowed on the Mosses of this locality 
since the commencement of the present century. Many of the rarer forms have 
been already recorded in various publications, and several detached papers 
referring to them have been published, the latest being a short list in the Guide 
to Belfast and the Adjacent Counties, issued by the Belfast Naturalists’ Field 
Club in 1874. None of these profess, however, to be complete, and the 
present is the first attempt at a moss-flora of this portion of the country. 
From what has been already stated, the botanist will not hesitate to con- 
clude that the North of Ireland is rich in mosses. And so it proves : the basalt 
