66 MOSSES IN THE VICINITY OF CLEVELAND. 



as much as possible technicalities, in order to facilitate the 

 study of this interesting branch of botany, thereby render- 

 ing the investigation less repulsive and obscure in its 

 detail. 



In order the better to accomplish this object, it will be 

 necessary to give a brief general description of some of the 

 organs more intimately connected with their individuality, 

 and explain some of the terms necessarily involved in their 

 generic and specific descriptions. 



The Mosses belong to that subdivision of botany called 

 cryptogamic acrogenous plants, having a distinct axis of 

 growth, and furnished with leaves of great regularity and 

 beauty, more or less distinct and specific. In their habits 

 of growth they are either erect or creeping, terrestrial or 

 aquatic. They are destitute of a vascular system, being 

 composed wholly of cellular tissue, witli the coloring matter 

 peculiar to vegetation, chlorophyle. 



These low tufted plants are propagated by spores, or mod- 

 ified seeds, furnished by regular capsules or spore cases. 

 These spores, in their development, partake more of the 

 nature of buds than seeds proper, undergoing none of the 

 chemical changes peculiar to the germination of seeds. 



The reproductive organs of the Mosses, like those of the 

 higher orders of plants, are of two kinds, termed Antheridia^ 

 or sterile flowers, and Pistillidia^ or fertile flowers, and 

 these may be either monoecious or dicBcious. 



The Anthevidia consist of a number of small cylindric or 

 fusiform sacs, containing an infinite number of minute 

 spheroidal bodies in a mucus-like fluid, which, at the proper 

 time, are emitted from the apex of these sacs. Soon after 

 this, their only oflice, they dry up and die. 



The Pistillidia, or fertile flowers, consist of a number of 

 urn-like bodies, growing at the end of pedicles, which, in 

 their matured state, become the capsule or sporangium in 

 which the spores are matured. Rarely more than one of 



