Page:VCH Hertfordshire 1.djvu/105

 BOTANY of mosses were enumerated. When the Flora Hertfordiensis was published (in 1849) the county list had been increased by the addition of 12 species, raising the number to 130. The great majority of these records are given on the authority of the authors of the Flora, a few being contri- buted by their correspondents, William Borrer and Isaac Brown. In these lists an attempt was made to indicate the comparative abundance or rarity of the different species by putting a number after the names of those which had been found within a radius of five miles of Hertford, the rarest being marked i, the most common 6, and others in propor- tion. The herbaria of Messrs. Coleman and Webb are now in the County Museum at St. Albans, where they have been deposited by the Council of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society, into whose pos- session they passed on the death of the Rev. R. H. Webb in 1880. A few years after they came into the hands of the Society the mosses were carefully examined and any doubtful specimens submitted to the late Mr. H. Boswell of Oxford, and in one or two instances corrections in the naming were found to be necessary. On March 18, 1884, a list of these mosses, with the localities at which they had been found, and also with some other records to bring the county list up to date, was presented to the Society, and was subsequently printed in the Transactions. 1 Mr. Boswell's examination of the Coleman collection has, however, made the list inaccurate in one or two particulars, and the following corrections should be noted : The species found in Panshanger Park and named Bryum turbinatum is pronounced by Mr. Boswell to be Eryum carneum, and the plant labelled Erachythecium plumosum by Cole- man should be Eurbyncbium confertum. Gymnostomum ovatum, Hedg. (Pottia cavifo/ia, Ehrh.), is by error printed Grimmia ovata, which is an alpine moss. When Pryor's Flora of Hertfordshire was published (in 1887), the editor, Mr. B. Daydon Jackson, F.L.S., printed in the appendix another list of Hertfordshire mosses, mainly drawn up from the sources above re- ferred to, the number of species there enumerated being 1 67. The most recent addition to our knowledge of the muscology of the county is a 'List of Mosses collected in the Neighbourhood of Hertford,' by Hugh Darton, 8 who enumerates sixty species of which eight are new to the Hertfordshire flora. They are Fissidens incuruus and isiridulus, Tortula cuneifolia, Earbula sinuosa and rigidu/a, Cinclodotus Brebissoni, Physcomitrella patens^ and Amblystegium irriguum. Bearing in mind that a large number of our British mosses are only to be met with in mountainous localities, and remembering that Hertfordshire is a highly cultivated county and that its southern dis- tricts are almost of a suburban character, and recollecting also that there is no considerable extent of boggy or marshy land within its area, it may be said that the moss-flora of the county is a rich and varied one. Of the 537 species recognized in Dixon and Jameson's Handbook 1 Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc. vol. iii. p. 67. 63
 * Ibid. vol. ix. p. 104 (1896).