THE MOSS-LIKE TILLANDSIA. I2g 



This Tillandsia usneoides would not be readily taken to be a 

 near ally of the pineapple {Ananassa), and yet so it is, the pine- 

 apple belonging to the same order, Bromeliacecz. Though exter- 

 nally so Afferent from other Bromeliads, it agrees with many of 

 them in its epiphytic habits, and of course with all in aeneric 

 characters. The scurfy epidermis, like that of the pineapple 

 leaves, displays a very interesting microscopic structure 



This little plant is of some use-perhaps rather insignificant- 

 m the world. It is employed in the preparation of an ointment 

 against hemorrhoids. The filamentous stems, when deprived of 

 their bark by steeping in water for a fortnight or so, are used in 

 some out-of-the-way parts of America in place of horse-hair for 

 stuffing and other purposes, and also for making cordage When 

 taken out of the water after steeping they are dried, and the 

 epidermis then separates readily from the fibre. 



The name .Tillandsia was given to the genus by Linnams in 

 honour of Ehas Tillands, Professor of Physic at Abo in Finland 

 Linnaeus gives a curious account of his reason for choosing this 

 name:-«Tillandsiae cannot bear water, and therefore I have 

 given this name to a genus from a professor at Abo, who in his 

 youth having an unpropitious passage from Stockholm to that 

 place, no sooner set his foot on shore than he vowed never a-ain 

 to venture himself upon the sea. He changed his original name 

 to Tillands, which means on or by land; and when he had sub- 

 sequently occasion to return to Sweden, he preferred a circuitous 

 journey of 200 Swedish miles through Lapland to avoid going 

 eight miles by sea." The most precious passage in the Scriptures 

 for that professor must, I take it, have been the one in the 

 Apocalypse, "And there shall be no more sea." 



I daresay most of us have read that delightful book, Ruskin's 

 P^serpma, in which his genius lights up with freshness a whole 

 field of beauty. But looking up at the sparkling stars of fancy we 

 are apt to stumble sadly over the hard stones of fact. Asa Gray 

 says of it. •-« In many a book the want of sufficient knowledge is 

 pleaded as an excuse; in this, it is paraded as a recommendation 

 Ignorance, no doubt, has its uses; but it is questionable whether 

 teaching is altogether the best use to put it to." And this little 

 TUlandsta has caught Ruskin up in a way that botanists will 

 readily recognise and poets forgive. 



