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Twenty Lessoiis on British Mosses; or First Steps to a Knowledge of that 

 beautiful Tribe of Plants, Illustrated hy dried specimens. By William 

 Gardinter, a. L. S. (Third Edition,) Edinburgh: Mathers. 



Twenty Lessons on British Mosses: (Second Series^) By the same Author. 

 London: Longman and Co. 



It is indeed true that — 



"Tho lowliest thing 

 Some lesson of -wortli to the mind can bring;" 



and no one is more sensible of the fact than the field naturalist; for his chief 

 delights are often found in the investigation of the commonest objects that 

 strew his every-day path. The bulk of the world, however, know not the 

 secret of obtaining happiness in the contemplation of such things, and can ill 

 ioin in sympathy with his peculiar feelings. Among the numerous tribes which 

 compose the vegetable kingdom, no one presents fewer points of attraction to 

 the ordinary observer, nor appears so utterly unimportant in contributing to 

 the welfare of mankind, or the support of the lower animals, as the Mosses. 

 Humbler in their growth than every other tribe of plants; more modest in 

 their hues; and as deficient in odour as they are in majesty of form and gaiety 

 of colouring, they indeed possess slender claims upon the attention of the 

 incurious, and even the scientific botanist is sometimes apt to overlook them 

 in his enthusiastic admiration of nobler tribes. linnacus in his ingenious class- 

 ification of the principal families of vegetables into ranks analogous to those 

 of human society, assigned to the Mosses that of "Servants, plants of the 

 winter, hungry; occupying in immense numbers all the places relinquished by 

 the higher tribes." Certainly one who had not inquired into their structure 

 and habits, would be disposed to assign them even a lower rank than that 

 which the sagacious father of naturalists gave to them; and were we to rate 

 them according to their economical value, we should consider them much inferior 

 to the iodine-yielding sea-weeds, the 'slaves' of vegetation, as Linnocus styles 

 them ; or even the mushrooms, the '^vagabonds' of the vegetable creation, which, 

 in the quaint words of the same Naturalist are "barbarous, naked, putrescent, 

 rapacious, voracious," although, by the by, they form a most important article 

 of food to southern Europeans of all ranks. 



. To the inquiring eye of the Naturalist, however, these tiny fairy plants, 

 the mosses, are replete with interest; and the investigation of their curious 

 structure and economy has of late years employed many of the most talented 

 and ingenious Botanists of Europe. In our own country too the Mosses have 

 been recently gaining a certain amount of general favour, which is gradually 

 increasing day by day; and at the present time the taste for collecting and 

 examining them is by no means confined to the narrow circle of scientific 

 botanists. To the two little works whose titles are prefixed to this paper, is 

 due the merit of increasing to a considerable extent, the popular favour for these 



