CHAPTER. VEG 
THE MOSSES 
WE noticed, at the close of the alge, that we had come 
to forms of plants which bore something very much like 
leaves, forms which were no longer content with mere 
ribbons, or masses of cells, nor with simple continuously 
branching tubes, and we now come to the group of plants 
which have fairly and beyond all doubt crossed the 
boundary, and are possessed of a perfectly definite stem 
and leaves. This is true, I say, of the group, but we 
must still remember what was said in Chapter I. about 
classification. Nature does not draw hard and fast lines 
between class and class, and the mosses have certain poor 
relations in the shape of the liverworts, some of which 
have either never learned to produce leaves, or else have 
degenerated and forgotten the way. Yet by their general 
fashion of growth, and above all by their way of repro- 
ducing the family, they are obviously so closely allied 
that we cannot separate them, and must regard them as 
boys whose general work entitles them to be in some 
particular form, but who in one particular subject of 
the form’s work are hopelessly unable to keep up. With 
these exceptions we shall have little more to do. They are 
the fit subject for a more detailed work, but we must first 
grasp the general type before trying to comprehend the 
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