—51 — 



To study the peristome and annulus, etc.; if the operculum 

 still remains, remove it with forceps or dissecting needle, carefully 

 saving it on the slide; cut the capsule lengthwise with the scissors 

 and spread out each half on the slide, one outside up and the other 

 the inside up; or the capsule can be first split and the pieces of 

 operculum removed afterwards. This prevents any loss of minute 

 parts. If the spores obscure the parts, a minute's boiling over the 

 lamp will scatter them. The walls of the capsule will often curl 

 up so strongly as to make it necessary to split them with the dis- 

 secting needles to cause them to lie flat. 



WHAT ARE MOSSES? 

 By a. J. Grout and Marie L. Sanial. 



THERE are at least three different classes of plants which 

 popularly pass under the name of mosses: true mosses, He- 

 paticaj or liverworts, and lichens. The lichens are gray, 

 yellow, brown and various other colors and shades, but are seldom 

 of true plant green: then, too, they have no true stem and leaves, 

 but may consist of ascending or even pendant (in the case of tree 

 lichens, "hair moss") stem-like divisions or of a flattened thalloid 

 expansion either membranaceous or coriaceous in structure. 



There are two species of lichens to which the name moss has 

 been popularly and erroneously applied. The first the hair "moss" 

 (Usnea), consists of strong, greenish-gray filaments and resembles 

 a small mane or wig. It clothes the branches of trees and under- 

 shrubs in dark woods and is well known to every hunter of squirrels, 

 from its amazing similarity to the tail of a hiding gray squirrel. 



The second is the reindeer "moss" {Cladonia rangiferina), 

 the great boon of the Laplander. It simulates a grayish crust-like 

 mass of much-branched, rootless and leafless hollow shrubs in 

 miniature, their height being seldom more than two inches. 



The liverworts are more likely to be mistaken for mosses, as 

 they belong to the same branch or subdivision [Bryophyla) of the 

 vegetable kingdom, and are very closely related. The foliose he- 

 patics have a stem and leaves, and when sterile some forms may 

 be mistaken for true mosses, even by one who has a considerable 

 knowledge of the plants, especially the alpine Gymnomitrium, 

 which has closely appressed but emarginate leaves and julaceous, 

 erect branches. 



