72 Vaizey. — On Catharinea lateralis. 
In this way a sympodium is formed on which the fruit comes 
to have an apparently lateral position. 
I have found two specimens cladocarpous, the oophyte 
stem having sent out a lateral branch, on the end of 
which there was a sporogonium, as well as on the main 
stem. I have also one specimen in which the lateral branch 
has a lateral fruit. Through the kindness of Mr. J. G. 
Baker, of Kew, I learn that in the Kew Herbarium a clado- 
carpous form occurs as C. undulata under Desmaziere’s Crypt. 
France, Series I. No. 250. I find that Milde 1 described 
and named a form as Atrichum anomalum in 1869 quite 
different from that now described ; consequently, in con- 
formity with usage, the name of Bryhn must be discarded as 
having been previously occupied. I therefore propose, after 
having consulted with Dr. Braithwaite, to call the present 
form, whether it be regarded as a variety or species, C. 
lateralis. 
As we have no absolute criterion of species and variety, I 
shall not discuss in which category the present form should be 
placed. I am rather inclined myself to regard it as an 
incipient species. 
With the knowledge of the existence of such a form as that 
just described, and of the pleurocarpous species of Fissidens 
among acrocarpous mosses, it is impossible not to think a 
classification founded upon the difference between acrocarpous, 
cladocarpous and pleurocarpous mosses, a highly artificial and 
unnatural one. If this view be adopted, it may be hoped that 
it will be a step towards the discovery of a new and more 
natural system of classification for the mosses. 
1 Bot. Zeit. 1869, and Jaeger et Sauerbeck, Genera et Species, Muscorum. 
Botanical Laboratory, Cambridge, 
February, 1888. 
