90 Transactions. 
to be here, Vitrina pellucida, the glass shell. Something moving 
on the damp side of the stone catches your eye. What are these 
things? like, but far smaller than, grains of rice ; and they are 
moving along one after another in a hair’s-breadth fissure in the 
stone. Pick them up with great care, using your tweezers, and 
on examination, under a good lens, which had better be done at 
home, you will find reason to marvel how Nature moulds, by 
means of so soft a substance as the “mantle” of a snail, a tiny 
monument, exquisitely sculptured, and solid and durable as 
marble itself. And this on such a minute scale. It would take 
fully two hundred of these shells, Carychiwm minimum, to cover 
the surface of one square inch—yet see how wonderfully their 
delicate convolutions are chased and carved into spiral twistings 
and grooves and furrows innumerable. There comes another 
small traveller with his house on his back, not so ornamental a 
dwelling as the last carried, but still well worth study. This 
shell is of a peculiarly rich oily gloss (Zwa lubrica) and a rich 
tawny brown, unlike any other land shell of ours in these two 
respects. How well it contrasts with the grey tones of the stone 
and the pure white of Carychiwm. 
We noticed, in passing, just now the graceful frondlets of a 
moss, but there are sure to be a dozen species of this lowly, but 
very lovely, sub-kingdom and its allies, beautifying the borders of 
the little hollow we are so interested in, and not beautifying 
earth alone. 
There is a reason for the existence of all life, animal and 
vegetable, quite apart from our direct needs and caprices. And, 
without a great deal of brain-racking, we can discern, surely, that 
one reason for the existence of mosses is to keep the moisture of 
rain about the roots of herbs and trees, and so, to help, in the 
long run, to equalise temperature and climate. Mosses are, in 
fact, a striking example of the power of littles. Look at the 
long ruddy stems which carry the fruit of thissame moss. There 
is good work for the microscope for many a long winter evening 
in the examination of the leaves and fruits of the one genus 
Hypnum, of which this moss is at once a very common and a very 
lovely type. 
This bit of hunting ground of ours is sure, almost, to have H. 
triquetrum, lorewm, and perhaps serpens and molluscwm, besides 
others more or less conspicuous; amongst the roots of which you 
will very likely find one or two species of the shell Vertigo, and that 
