262 
THE JOUltNAL OF BOTANY 
Scotland (Mitten).” B. Sauteri is near to B. erythrocarpum , but is 
generally recognised as a good species, and if a British plant should 
certainly be included in our moss-flora. I have found no notice of it 
in any other work; Braithwaite makes no reference to it, nor can I 
find any record of its discovery in Britain. I have endeavoured to 
trace the origin of the record, but without success. 1 do not know 
where Hobkirk’s herbarium now is, nor, of course, is it at all certain 
that it would contain the specimens on which the record is based. I 
have failed at present similarly to trace Spruce’s collection of mosses. 
I have been informed that Schimper purchased some, at least, of 
these at Spruce’s death, but Schimper’s moss herbarium at Kew has 
nothing to suggest this, and there are at any rate no specimens of 
B. Sauteri from Britain there. There remains the record credited 
to Mitten. I wrote to the New York Botanical Garden, asking for 
information on this; Mrs. Britton informs me that there are no 
British specimens in Mitten’s herbarium, only Swiss specimens, 
collected in part by Black. It is a little suggestive that the erroneous 
record of Brachytliecium trachypodium from Ben Lawers was con¬ 
nected with another Swiss specimen collected by Black, and it looks a 
little as if Mitten had confused the localities of some of Black’s Swiss 
mosses. In any case the evidence for Bryum Sauteri being a British 
plant cannot be considered of any value, the more so as Braithwaite 
makes no reference to it in his work.— H. N. Dixon. 
Pollination of Viscum album. Following up the experiments 
which were begun several years ago, and reported in this Journal 
(1916, 292; 1918, 331) early in the spring of last year, a sprig of 
male Viscum album with unopened flower-buds was tied firmly to a 
corresponding sprig of the female flower. The two sexes grow inter¬ 
mixed, in the plants experimented upon, and it was not difficult to 
take one of each kind, and tie them in such a way that the flower- 
buds were distant from each other about one inch; the heads thus 
tied were then enclosed in very fine silk gauze, which is pollen-proof. 
Later in the spring I noticed that, a minute insect had found a wav 
into one of the bags, at the place where the two stems were tied; 
I therefore considered all the experiments of 1922 as failures. This 
year I repeated the experiment, but before binding the two stems 
together, I wrapped cotton-wool round each of them, and afterwards 
round the two together. On to this cotton-wool the gauze bags were 
tied, and I am certain that they were thus rendered completely insect- 
proof. The mistletoe sprigs that were tied together were then made 
as rigid as possible to prevent the wind moving them. Out of five 
pairs of sprigs treated as above described, the female plant in four 
cases is fertilized and has well-formed berries. It is very difficult to 
account for the method of pollination under these circumstances, as 
it was certainly impossible for any insect to do it, and for the wind 
to blow the pollen out of the male flower across an inch of space to 
the female flower seems equally difficult, as the wind could not move 
them. I have never succeeded in shaking pollen out of male mistletoe 
flowers when in bloom.— Ftuelbeut Koiine. 
