CHAPTER IX. 



" The tiny moss, whose silken verdure clothes 



i 



The time-worn rock, and whose bright capsules rise 



Like fairy urns on stalks of golden sheen. 



Demand our admiration and our praise, 



As much as cedar kissing the blue sky, 



Or Krubal's giant flower. God made them all, 



And what He deigns to make should ne'er be deemed 



Unworthy of our study and our love." 



CHAKMING quality in this Moss order is the 

 power of revivification in the plants : pieces 

 that have been dried and laid away for years 

 still retain their vitality, thus rivalling the snail in the 

 British Museum, which, having been cured and glued to 

 a slab for years, found one happy morning that the glue 

 had given way, upon which it stretched forth its horns, 

 as if after a long, long sleep, protruded its broad foot, and 

 had travelled half over the case when its movements 

 attracted the eye of the curator of the department. 



These old dried mosses, the precious gleanings from an 

 old herbarium, when floated in water, expand to their 

 original size and form ; the minute cells of which they 

 are formed fill again with fluid, and only their paler hue 

 shows that they were not gathered yesterday. We 

 floated them out on a rainy day, and selected one which 

 belonged to the order succeeding the Fork-mosses for our 



