Abstract
FEW associations of naturalists have been originated by advertisement, but such was the genesis of the Moss Exchange Club. The Rev. C. H. Waddell first advertised in Science Gossip in December 1895 and, from the twenty-three favourable replies, founded the Club in the following year, when 2,077 specimens were distributed. It remained an association depending very largely on postal contact until 1922, when the need for closer personal association in field meetings led to the formation of the British Bryological Society. Miss Eleonora Armitage has collated the annual reports of both Club and Society into a short pamphlet (Miss Armitage, Dadnor, Ross). She was president at the Society's last meeting in 1939, and this review should serve the purpose of sustaining the collective interests of bryologists until more stable times allow a resumption of their activities. Several census lists of British bryophytes have been published, from the York Catalogue, compiled by J. A. Wheldon in 1889, to the latest taxonomic indexes for mosses, compiled by J. B. Duncan in 1926, and for hepatics, by A. Wilson in 1930. The taxonomy of mosses and liverworts is now largely established, but many bryological matters still require elucidation. Perhaps the post-war period will provide opportunities for detailed ecological studies—the relation of a moss or liverwort to its substrate, its reactions with other plants, and particularly of its unique physiology, which allows a special phenology of reproduction not possessed by any other kind of plant.
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The British Bryological Society. Nature 153, 768 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153768b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153768b0