the Genus Streptopogon. 129 
consists of two stems about a centimetre high. After closely 
comparing in every character these plants with specimens of 
5 . rigidus from South America I have failed to find any 
points of difference. The upper leaves have the characteristic 
oblong or oblong-spathulate shape, and exactly the same 
areolation, with the marginal cells small and subquadrate. 
The gemmae (Fig. 39) also are of the same shape and size, 
and are borne at the apex of the leaf in exactly the same 
manner. Some of the lower leaves of ‘ 5 . Calymperes * are 
not gemmiferous, and in these the nerve vanishes below the 
leaf-apex (Fig. 97), so that the leaf has a very different 
appearance. I at first thought that this might be a distinctive 
character of the Madagascan plant, but an investigation of 
young plants of S', rigidus from South America showed that 
this was not the case. The Madagascan material is very 
scanty, consisting (in the specimen sent to me) of only two 
apparently very young stems. On comparing young plants 
of ‘ S'. Calymperopsis * — which as noted below is to be referred 
to S', rigidus — from Bolivia (in Bescherelle’s herbarium at the 
British Museum, South Kensington) exactly the same shaped 
leaves with a vanishing nerve were found. Further, in the 
specimen ‘Muse. Amazon, et And., nr. 139’ of S. rigidus in 
the British Museum Herbarium, the same shaped leaves 
occur on innovation branches, in one case with the nerve 
ceasing at some distance below the leaf-apex. There seems 
therefore no reason whatever for separating the Madagascan 
plant from the American S', rigidus . Although this distribu- 
tion of the present species affords an extremely interesting 
and remarkable case, it is by no means unparalleled. We 
have seen above (p. 122) that the Madagascan plant variously 
known as ‘ Streptopogon Rutenbergii , C. Mull./ ‘ S.Hildebrandtii \ 
C. Miill./ and ‘ S'. Parkeri , Mitt, mss./ is so close to the South 
American S', erythrodontus (Tayl.), Wils., that it cannot be 
separated specifically. It is worthy of note also that Mitten 
( 13 ) in his account of the mosses of the Cameroons Mountain 
and the River Niger remarks, ‘The species here enumerated 
appear to represent a Moss vegetation similar to that of 
K 
