DECEMBER. 539 



" You naked trees, whose shady leaves are lost. 

 Wherein the birds were wont to build their bowre, 

 And now are cloth' d with Moss and hoary frost, 

 Instead of blossoms, wherewith your buds did flowre ; 

 I see your tears that from your boughs do rain, 

 Whose drops in drerie ysicles remain." 



LINNAEUS' s vivid description of the Mosses, penned 

 with, his usual imaginative power, has never yet been 

 surpassed. " When," says he, " all things around us 

 languish and sleep, when the streams are frozen, the 

 groves silent, the fields hidden with a covering of 

 snow, and sorrow every where apparent, as the face 

 of nature is pale and sad with the image of death ; 

 then the Mosses present themselves amidst the ruins 

 of vegetation, and mantle the stones and rocks with a 

 silky vesture glowing with the brightest colours." 



The most incurious observer must have noticed 

 that as the pale descending year hastens to its conclu- 

 sion, the roof of almost every thatched shed, barn, or 

 outhouse, assumes the most vivid green colour from 

 the various Mosses that have domiciled upon its 

 slopes ; every wall top glistens with their brown or 

 yellow seed-vessels and purple stalks, while the driest 

 tiles, stones, or bricks, are dotted with the grey 

 cushion-like tufts of the little Grimmia pulvinata, 

 whose capsules or thecae are buried amidst the leaves 

 that rise up, each furnished with a long white pellucid 

 hair. CLAEE has noticed these "flowers" of the 

 Mosses, in his observant Poems 



" Even Moss that gathers on the stone, 

 Crown'd with its little knobs of flowers is seen." 



In hot weather the Mosses become crisped, curled up, 

 discoloured, and apparently lifeless ; but they imbibe 

 moisture with such rapidity, that the slightest shower 



