49 



shewing under the microscope the structure of the stem, and the mode 

 in which the leaves are produced, far more beautifully than any other 

 portion of the plant. 



Jungermanuise should by all means be cultivated with mosses. 

 They are rather more difficult to manage, but their great beauty well 

 repays the additional attention they require. In the whole range of 

 botanical- science, it would be hard to find a more conclusive proof that 

 there are, in Nature, assemblages by whatever name we recognise 

 them, classes, orders, families or genera, in which the individuals have 

 true and close affinity with specific distinction, than we have in the 

 associated groups of mosses and hepaticte, especially the jungermannise. 

 For plants so small, the variety in form, texture, and colour, in mosses 

 is surprising ; the same may be said of the jungermaunise. Many of 

 the mosses, it might be said at a glance, differ from each other vastly 

 more than they do from the corresponding species of jungemianniae. 

 Yet is there no confusion, no intermingling, no trace of the develop- 

 ment of the lower into the higher form. 



But if this be true, we have in the names we apply to the collective 

 groups of these lowly plants far more than the distinctions formed 

 by systematic botanists out of their own fancy, and for their own use. 

 We have expressions of ideas originally existing in the mind of the 

 Creator. Musci and jungermaunise, hypnura and bryum, are no 

 longer mere hard names, needful only for the student, but symbols of a 

 thought existing before all worlds, and beaming into our sight, as we 

 perceive that to none of the varied forms of jungermannia is given the 

 capsule of the moss, and to none of the widely distinguished kinds of 

 mosses the four cleft pericarp of the jungermannia. 



And if we turn from the consideration of these less conspicuous dis- 

 tinctions to a comparison, which seems at first sight to suggest marks 

 of contrast rather than of resemblance, we shall find the very same 

 elements of beauty in the grandest and mightiest forms of vegetable 

 life, and in the least. The pine and the cocoa nut, the banana and 

 the date palm, the sugar-cane and the vine, have each a type in 

 miniature amongst the ignoble tribes of liverworts and mosses. The 

 same creative thought repeated, which is yet not the same, but only 

 alike beautiful. 



That we may see aU this and infinitely more iu Nature with true 

 delight, we need before all other requisites the knowledge that the 

 power and the wisdom which made and which sustains all, is not 

 against us, but on our side. Revelation here assumes a teaching too 

 vast to be entrusted even to the voice of created things, and proclaims 



