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luxuriating in damp woods, rotten timber, rotten fruit, dead 

 leaves, and what not, have any real beauty or claims to your 

 regard ; let me briefly draw your attention to another large 

 group of cryptogamous plants, — the Mosses — which I trust you 

 will allow are free from anything to render them obnoxious in 

 your eyes. Ferns, which are the highest order of Cryptogams, 

 find, at the present day, admirers everywhere ; indeed they are 

 so much sought after by cultivators and collectors, that the mania 

 for them, we fear, is fast leading to the extinction of some of our 

 rarer native kinds. But the Mosses, though small, are quite as 

 graceful and beautiful as the Ferns, more generally to be met Avith, 

 and with the farther advantage — an advantage, however, shared 

 equally with them by the Fungi — of presenting themselves in the 

 greatest abundance and perfection at that season of the year, 

 when the botanist finds little else to do out of doors. 



Lord Bacon says that "In the royal ordering of gardens, 

 there ought to be gardens for all the months of the year, 

 in which, severally, things of beauty may be then in season ; "■ 

 and the selecting of such flowers and fruits as are suitable to each 

 month, he describes as the way to have " ver perpetuum." He 

 who steps out from his own to walk in nature's garden, will find 

 that she, too, has so for provided a "ver perpetuum" as to 

 exhibit a constant succession of forms throughout the year 

 to adorn and beautify her beds. There are few more 

 beautiful objects under the microscope than the leaves and 

 fructification of some of our native mosses, which grow on almost 

 every wall, and tree, and Sank, and which spring up in their 

 greatest freshness and luxuriance in the fall of the year, when 

 almost all other vegetation is passing into decay. If any of my 

 hearers can be induced to attend to these interesting little plants, 

 they may be of much service in helping us to a better knowledge 

 of the Mosses of this district, of which we have not a complete 

 list even of the commonest species. And the study of them is 



