Volume 9 - Electric Scotland

178 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY
most third as well as on the back of the nerve in the same region.
The nerve is also excurrent, at times longly so. The central basal
areolation is also much longer than in the ordinary form. The most
characteristic specimens were found at Taynuilt at a considerable
distance from the sea, as well as near Loch Killisport.
BRYUM PARASEMUM. Closely tufted; stems short, simple or
occasionally branched leaves rather
; closely imbricated, slightly
narrowed at the base, broadly obovate, very concave, obtuse and
rounded at summit; almost cucullate nerve about ; 50 broad near
base, tapering rapidly and not quite reaching the summit ; margin
entire, not recurved but plain, and not formed of narrower cells ;
very laxly areolated, cells not chlorophyllose so far as observed,
with thin walls, oblong or bluntly rectangular, 30 to 50 by 15 to 22,
of nearly the same size throughout, but a little smaller upwards,
and rather more rhomboid.
In sandy hollows near Stevenston, Ayrshire, 1863. Although
there are several under this section of the Brya with broad, hollow
leaves, I cannot identify this moss with any. Wilson pronounced
in its favour, but I cannot recall whether or not he gave a name to
it. I rather think he waited to see whether fruit might
I have not been in the locality since.
be found.
ISOTHECIUM INTERLUDENS (n. sp.}.
The other day I alighted
on a small parcel of mosses which I had long reckoned as irretrievably
lost. This parcel consists of five specimens of what the late
Mr. Wilson, author of the Bry. Brit., persisted in identifying with
Brachythedum gladale. As 1 dissented from this decision, I published,
in 1865, a description of the moss under the name Isothecium
intermedium, which I now change to /. interludens, owing to the
former name having been previously given to a Hypnum, even
although the moss referred to is now classified under the genus
Bryum. As I have detected stolons in three of the specimens, such
as are found in Isothecium, I have been induced to submit the
leaves under the microscope, when additional corroboration of my
former opinion has been obtained. The cells of the pagina are
long, very narrow, nearly cylindrical, and quite distinct and detached
from one another, while in the basal-alar spaces the cells are small,
oval, yellow or reddish-brown and opaque, owing to the granular
contents, both conditions exactly as in Isothecium. I may mention
that the moss was found by the late Mr. A. M'Kinlay and myself
on almost all our western mountains of any considerable elevation,
as Ben Ledi, Ben Voirlich (by Loch Lomond),
etc. : also on Ben
Lawers.
The following
is a rather fuller description
:
Stems erect, strong, reddish, fastigiately branched, branches
often slightly arched ;
leaves straight, very seldom slightly secund,
erecto-patent both in a dry and wet condition, concave, cordate