254 THE MOUNTAIN. 



mountains, and penetrate the coldest arctic spaces. Hardy- 

 cosmopolites ! they av?, found wherever light and moisture 

 can penetrate, and ornament by their graceful foliage the 

 most forsaken nooks, crannies, and neglected places. In 

 summer their vivid velvet-mantles and verdant cushions 

 gleam through the forests, investing nearly every prostrate 

 trunk or living tree, bank, rock, and bed of brook. In win- 

 ter their fragile bright-green leaves may be found fresh and 

 smiling beneath frost and ice, and their tiny fruit-bearing 

 stems carrying fantastic caps on bursting spore-cases, are 

 often seen penetrating the snow with a reproductive energy 

 that defies the most intense cold. This is a floral chapter 

 that seems perennial in its fascinations, and the bryologist is 

 especially happy as even winter gives no interruption to his 

 attractive labors. Mountains seem to be the special home 

 of the moss family, as the valleys, cultivated lowlands, and 

 prairies, do not appear to attract this little race of rock and 

 desert-taming pioneers of the vegetable kingdom. The 

 Pennsylvania Alleghany range is a rich and varied moss 

 district, and has been examined, to a certain extent, by a 

 number of cryptogamic botanists.* It seems to possess the 

 condition of elements most favorable as a habitat of this 

 class of plants. In its cool air, its widely extended forests 

 with interminable shades, and quantities of fallen and decay- 

 ing timber, its extents of surface covered with fragments of 

 rock, its moist ravines and gorges with projecting cliffs, 

 its sequestered dells and shady precipices, its swampy places 

 and fresh running-streams, — we are presented with a medium 

 of special adaptation to the life-affinities of the Bryacese. 

 Embracing several geological formations with diversity of 

 mineral composition, which gives origin to a variety of soils 

 from disintegration, and to the exposure for moss-growing 



* Of the number who have visited the mountain for moss-gather- 

 ing purposes, are the accomplished bryologists Leo Lesquereux and 

 Thomas P. James, two indefatigable workers in this department of 

 science, to whom the American student of botany owes much, and, 

 it is to be hoped will owe more, before their labors are ended. 



