546 WILD FLOWERS OF 



wide-spreading, soft and flossy mosses belonging to 

 the Hypnum tribe, distinguished by their double 

 Peristome, each consisting of sixteen teeth, filiform 

 processes being frequently placed between the seg- 

 ments of the inner fringe. There are sixty-seven 

 British species of Hypnum. Many of these combine 

 to beard old walls and ruins with a reverential aspect 

 that tinges them as if with an artistic pencil, - 

 So looks 



" Th' embattled tower o'ergrown with bearded moss, 



And by the melancholy skill of time, 



Moulded to beauty." * 



The genus SplacJmum presents some of the rarest 

 and most beautiful species known in the world. $. 

 vasculosum, with its globular rich brown shining cap- 

 sules, is the queen of British Mosses, but she is only 

 "at home ''' on Ben More and the Breadalbane moun- 

 tains in Scotland, at three thousand feet elevation. 

 By far the most important though humble ministers 

 in the economy of Nature are the Sphagna, or bog- 

 mosses, whose hoary tresses clothe the misty moun- 

 tains to such a vast extent, forming those turbaries 

 within which the niightest rivers are nursed in their 

 flossy cradles, fed by the waters imbibed by them from 

 the flying vapours, and gently led with flowing urns 

 to the mouths of those ravines down which they 

 plunge in foam and spray, hurrying along their loud- 

 voiced waters to grace and fructify the plains beneath. 

 What botanist is there whose heart does not bound 

 within him at the recollection of those bogs upon 

 whose margin or within whose plashy verge 

 " Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on 

 For ever," 



* BUCEE. 



