of Imperfect Plants. 255 



to the roots and trunks of trees, and even to the bare and flinty 

 rock. 



Ego lautlo runs amoeni 



Rivos, et musco circumlita saxa.— Hor. lib. i. Epist. x. 6. 



As they affect the most barren soils, so they thrive best also 

 in the coldest and wettest seasons ; so that even the chilling 

 blast of winter, that deprives other plants of their foliage and 

 threatens destruction to the race of vegetables, serves but to 

 refresh and to revive the family of the mosses. 



The root consists generally of a number of small and slen- 

 der fibres, closely matted together, as in Tetraphis viridula ; 

 smooth, as in most examples ; or covered with a fine and vel- 

 vety down, of a dark or rusty colour, as in Bryum ligulatum, 

 one of the most beautiful of all British mosses. Some mosses 

 are altogether stemless, as in the case of Phascum muticum ; 

 but where a stem exists, it is generally like the root, weak and 

 slender, though sometimes stiff and shrubby, as in Hypnum 

 alopecurum. The branches are in their structure similar to 

 that of the stem, and are distributed, in certain genera, ac- 

 cording to some uniform and specific mode ; in others, with- 

 out any regular order. The leaves of the mosses are exceed- 

 ingly minute, but are, at the same time, exceedingly elegant. 

 The most frequent forms are the linear, the lanceolate, the 

 oval, the concave. They are always, as I believe, sessile, 

 though often decurrent, or sheathing, with the margin beauti- 

 fully waved. Some are entirely smooth, as in Hypnum splcn- 

 dens; others are beautifully dotted, or reticulated, or streaked, 

 as in Hypnum striatum. The Buxbaumia aphylla of Schmidel 

 was thought to be wholly leafless, till Dr. Brown at last de- 

 tected its leaves*. 



The fructification of the mosses, though extremely elegant 

 in its structure, is yet at the same time so extremely minute 

 as to be but seldom noticed, except by botanists. The an- 

 cients regarded the mosses as a tribe of plants originating in 

 the putrefaction of other vegetables, and consequently as 

 producing neither flower nor fruit. But this doctrine began 

 to give way along with the doctrine of equivocal generation. 

 Dilleniua seems to have been the first to catch a glimpse of 

 the truth with regard to the fructification of the mosses, as 

 we may gather from his appendix to his catalogue of flowers 

 growing in the neighbourhood of Gissef; but Micheli was 

 the first of all botanists who obtained a complete view of their 

 sexual apparatus J. Linnaus followed up the investigations 



• Linn. Trans, rol.xii, |>. 883. f Gisscc, J719. 8vo. 



: Nov. Plant. Gen. p. 108. tab. lix. 1739. 



