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Transactions. 91 
minutest and perhaps loveliest of the Helices, H. pygmea. 
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 nanwm, Physe. 
pyriforme, possibly a little of the minute Ph. subulatum, 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. pomiformis. Possibly you may notice 
a tall, beautiful-leaved moss with four or five or even more golden- 
ruddy fruit-stalks upspringing together out of its crown of green 
foliage. This is a prize. It is one of the genus Brywm, M. 
undulatwm, 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—the dainty 
Bryum argenteum, Grimmia pulvinata, commonest, softest 
tufted little moss there is; G. Doniana; Hom. sericewm, whose 
silk-lustrous leaves and prolific fruitage mark it out well; H. 
populewm ; one or two Tortule or awl-mosses ; and others easy 
to name when once known, but difficult to describe. 
Then, deep in among the stems of such larger mosses as we 
have noticed, and the roots of neighbouring flowering plants, the 
ground is intricately covered with the inwoven greenery of such 
beautiful and elfish-looking plants as the Commoner Hepatics, 
e.g., Loph. bidentata, Plag. asplenoides, and Pl. 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 crystalline houses 
they carry about so glibly. And yet, did we study them at home, 
narrowly, there is as little doubt that we should find even so 
magnificently housed as creature as Helix pygmea, or our pet 
mollusk Carychiwm min., has a dread of some monster of a wood 
louse, or a worm, or of some conscienceless terrific fellow-snail ! 
Then even the larger mollusks themselves are a prey to sundry 
little parasites, which, though they may not injure their host 
fatally, no doubt inspire him with an occasional wish to ‘“shufHe 
