Mosses and Lichens at Home 



beautiful even when dried and pressed for the herbarium, so that 

 one with a taste for collecting may regard the artistic as well as 

 the useful. 



The wide distribution of the mosses and lichens and their 

 power of enduring great cold renders them available for study at 

 all times of the year. They are reported to have been found in 

 all parts of the globe. 



Dr. Isaac I. Hayes who in 1854 discovered Grinnell Land, tells 

 of finding "moss" as far north as Booth Bay in Greenland, in 

 Latitude 76 30'. The uses to which the moss was put in their 

 distress were varied. After improvising a hut from a crevice in 

 the rock by filling open places with loose stones pried from the 

 frozen ground, they made a roof of sails and thatched it a foot 

 thick with "moss" dug with their tin dinner plates from under 

 two feet of snow. All cracks were closed with the moss, and 

 tapers of "moss" dipped in oil were depended upon to light 

 their dismal quarters. 



The habit of using moss for filling in chinks and cracks is a 

 common one among all pioneers, as one may see by observing 

 the log huts in newly opened districts, for mixed with clay it 

 forms a useful cement. This art is not known alone to man. 



" Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush 

 That overhung a molehill large and round, 

 I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush 

 Sing hymns of rapture, while I drank the 

 Sound with joy and oft an unintruding guest, 

 I watched her secret toils from day to day ; 

 How true she warped the moss to form her nest, 

 And modell'd it within with wood and clay." 



Claire The Thrush's Nest. 



