I'ra)isactio)i,s. 91 



minutest and perhaps loreliest of the Helices, H. pygmcea. 

 Below this little two-inch high crest of damp soil well moistened 

 by the stored up rain-drops, fallen days ago on the larger mosses, are 

 clumps of other genera, e. g. Pogonatum aloides and namtm, Physc. 

 pyriforme, possibly a little of the minute Ph. siibtdatnm, while the 

 common Fork Moss, D. scoparium, thickly tufts the shady nooks 

 above. Here is a moss with tiny apples each on a stalk — a very 

 pretty little plant is it, B. pomi/ormis. Possibly you may notice 

 a tall, beautiful-leaved moss with four or live or even more golden- 

 ruddy fruit-stalks upspringing togetlier out of its ci'own of green 

 foliage. This is a prize. It is one of the genus Bryum, M. 

 imdulatum, and an unforgetable trophy. 



On the very stone we turned over we may tind — especially if 

 it be rather newly fallen from the dyke behind our Cow Parsnip 

 —six or seven species of mosses all very frequent — tlie dainty 

 Bryum argeideum, Grimmia jmlvinata, commonest, softest 

 tufted little moss there is ; G. Doiiiana ; Horn, sericeum, Avliose 

 silk-lustrous leaves and prolific fruitage mark it out well ; U. 

 populeum ; one or two Tortulca or awl-mosses ; and others easy 

 to name when once known, but difficult to describe. 



Then, deep in among the stems of sucli larger mosses as we 

 have noticed, and the roots of neighbouring flowering plants, tlie 

 ground is intricately covered with the inwoven greenery of such 

 beautiful and eltish-looking plants as the Commoner Hepatics, 

 e.g., Loph. bidentata, Plug, asplenoides, and J'L spinulosa. So 

 lavish is nature of means and ways of nourishing different grades 

 and successions of being, and of supplying waste and loss, for 

 ever filling up and restoring, and making paradises out of deserts. 

 And what fairy-like pure paradises they are — these fresh, pellucid- 

 green, labyrinthine groves of moss and glades of Hepatic ! The 

 dwellers therein are, no doubt, happy in their way ; very little 

 reck they of taxes and war-levies ! One imagines them as free 

 and beautiful in their very lives as the little ciystalline liouses 

 they carry about so glibly. And yet, did we study them at liome, 

 narrowly, there is as little doubt that we should lind even so 

 magnificently housed as creature as Helix pyginna, or our pet 

 mollusk Carycliititn min., has a dread of some monster of a wood- 

 louse, or a worm, or of some conscienceless terrific fellow-snail I 

 Then even the larger mollusks themselves are a prey to sundry 

 little parasites, which, though they may not injure their host 

 fatally, no doulit inspire liim with an occasinnal wish to "shuffle 



