^j^P'-'l Bastovv, Victorian HepaticcB. 75 



serrated, or divided, or margined, or entire, and are of various 

 colours. A fruiting specimen is not very easy to be obtained. 

 The fruit-stalks are like silver threads, almost transparent, and 

 generally very lax, and not erect unless they are in a crowded 

 tuft. The fruit cannot well be mistaken, for it usually opens 

 in a cruciate form with four valves. Sometimes the elaters 

 will be found adhering to the opened valves ; the latter are like 

 microscopic springs, and in freshly-opened capsules they writhe 

 about, apparently spreading the spores right and left. 



I shall never forget my first introduction to a creeping 

 hepatic called Polyotiis magellanicus. It is shown at Fig. 18 

 in the page of illustrations. We were slowly climbing up the 

 Mount Wellington track when I observed a small plant with 

 lobules on the bases of the leaves resembling clubs, and very 

 different to any that I had seen before. The colours were rich 

 brown, and quite new to me, and I felt much the same as 

 Linnaeus felt when he beheld the golden crop of furze in full 

 bloom on the moors in the North of England. I was glad, and 

 rejoiced to see this tiny plant, so beautiful in structure and 

 yet so tiny, so adapted to its purpose — it clothed the old tree 

 like a mantle, " so that none might mock the dead." 



Few people deign to notice these small forms of vegetable 

 life — they are too small. When the student has collected the 

 ferns and lycopods, he usually draws the hue. I recollect well 

 about 40 years ago that I was in a railway cutting, and at the 

 sides of the cutting I drew out some calamites two feet long, 

 but crushed If at ; they were the remains of a large forest of 

 gigantic Equiseta^, or " horse-tails," and coal-pits close at hand 

 — that was cryptogamic growth of former ages, to which we 

 owe so many comforts in the cold winters of Britain. It was 

 easy then, with the surrounding conditions, to picture the 

 country crowded with equisetum 40 or 50 feet in height, 

 and the diptera buzzing about one in whole brigades. These 

 plants (the equiseta were like umbrella skeletons turned 

 upside down and socketed into each other) and flies and hzards 

 were at home in those moist levels, as they are still at home in 

 this country. In Macedon and in Ferntree Gully the decaying 

 logs are crowded with Hepaticge, lowly plants, growing to 

 six inches in height. Gottschea Lehmanniana has its leaves 

 very much laminated, so that it is a difficult matter sometimes 

 to separate them for the determination of the species. The 

 cavities of the fallen logs are all occupied with mosses and 

 Hepaticae, and some are very minute ; some are covered with 

 Polyotus magellanicus. In the velvety masses of Lajeunia each 

 leaf has a sack ; the water found in these sacks is full of life. 

 These plants, with proper leaves, are known as the Foliosae in 

 the accompanying key, with distinct leaves and stems. Other 



