,200 The Scottish Naturalist. 



from any part of their surface, instead of from two invariable 

 points. Besides this grand distinguishing point, they possess 

 several other peculiar qualities in common. They consist of cells 

 only, and hence are often called cellular plants in contradistinction 

 to those plants which are possessed of fibres and woody tissue. 

 /Their development is also superficial growth taking place from 

 the various terminal points and hence they are called Acrogens 

 and Thallogens to distinguish them from monocotyledonous and 

 dicotyledonous plants. Popularly they are known as mosses, 

 lichens, algae, and fungi. 



The plants in question open up a vast field of research. They 

 -Constitute a microcosm an imperium in imperio a strange 

 minute world underlying the great world of sight, which, though 

 often unheeded by man, is yet ever in full and active operation 

 around us. It is pleasant to turn aside for a while from the busy 

 human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, sorrows, and labours, 

 and contemplate the silent and wonderful economy of that other 

 .world of minute or invisible vegetation with which we are so closely 

 related though we know it not. There is something exceedingly 

 interesting in tracing Nature to her simplest forms. The mind 

 .of man has a natural craving for the infinite. It delights to 

 speculate either on the vast or the minute ; and we are not sur- 

 prised at the paradoxical remark of Linnaeus that Nature appeared 

 to him greatest in her. least productions. 



There is a certain appropriateness in the visit to Greenock of a 



society which studies these remarkable objects. There is a good 



'field along our shores, and on the moorland heights behind, for 



the collection of these plants. And were it not for the lateness 



of the season, and the withdrawal of the means of communication 



for there is no town in the three kingdoms that has greater 



facilities for getting out of it than Greenock the members of the 



society could be taken to haunts at the head of our sea lochs, 



where they could find a larger number of rare and interesting species 



of mosses and lichens than almost anywhere else in Scotland. 



But apart from that, our good town itself presents an interesting 



field of study to the cryptogamist, so that he who runs may read. 



There was a book published on the flora of the Colosseum at Rome 



containing a description of upwards of four hundred plants that 



grew on that great historical ruin. Similarly a book might be 



written on the mosses and lichens that grow on the walls and 



