MYOSOTIS SICULA IN JERSEY 
215 
date his specimens, the fact that he does not here name them at all 
indicates that he regarded them as a peculiar form, and makes it fairly 
certain that these specimens represent the dune form which he named 
oraria. The third sheet probably explains why he never wrote 
further ; it contains fairly typical specimens of M. ccesjpitosa from the 
“fosses des Dunes de Flandre vers Nieuport, Coxide, Furnes,” which 
were originally labelled by Dumortier “ Myosotis strigulosa ” and 
later corrected by him to “ ccespitosa .” He doubtless realised that 
the plant from the dried-up marshy places on the dunes was the same 
as that from the ditches, and abandoned his name. Compared with 
the Jersey form these types of oraria could not be called “ basses.” 
Nor are they especially divaricate, certainly nothing like the Jersey 
fo rm, in which the branches may stick out at right angles so that 
those from opposite sides of the same stem may be in the same straight 
line. M. oraria Dumort. is certainly not M. sicula Guss. 
HEREFORDSHIRE SPHAGNA. 
By the Rev. C. H. Binstead, M.A., and Eleonora Armitage. 
It seems desirable to bring together all the available data of the 
occurrence of Bog Mosses in Herefordshire, as they are largely a relict 
flora in the county, and are slowly but surely vanishing. When the 
Plantagenet and later kings came down hither to guard the Marches 
from border raids, the surface of the country was mostly covered 
with oak forest intersected by trackways and by infrequent but 
rapid streams, with little swampy ground. The land now has been 
long drained and cultivated, the woodland has retreated up the hill¬ 
sides, and there is no Sphagnum on the low-tying moist ground. 
The chief hold, where most of the forms are found, is on the 
Black Mountain moorland in the West, in elevation 1800-2000 ft., 
with a neighbouring outlier, Cefn Hill; but even there the older 
hillside farmers say that the boggy areas have much dried up in their 
memory, and there is scarcely a bog-pool left. Another western area, 
known as Crowthers Pool and Pentre Gove, is a drying swamp on a 
hill with hardly any open water remaining. The only other localities, 
about ten in number, are just damp spots in woodland, small 
depressions under bushes, a few yards across ; a few moist places under 
furze bushes, as on the slopes of May Hill, in the south-east; or a 
small swamp on a bit of elevated common in one or two districts. 
The plants here have a precarious hold on existence ; one locality has 
been lost already, as the wood was felled and the land drained and 
cultivated; and, with a succession of dry seasons, other herbage 
spreads and fills up the ditch or depression, and the bog moss 
disappears. 
It may be taken as evidence of an anciently far wider distribution 
of Sphagna in Herefordshire that so large a number of species (17) is 
found, varying into very many forms (71). The Subsecunda forms, 
inundatum and auriculatum , are naturally the most widely dispersed ; 
Acutifolia, with ylumulosum in several forms comes next; Cymbifolia 
