THE INDIAN HEPATIC^. 251 



have information at second-hand in this country, where original facts 

 have to be recorded, great care and caution, and accurate and repeated 

 observations are necessary. I urge the fact of the absence of all 

 previous information more in extenuation of the defects of my own 

 paper than a desire to show what others have left undone. I urge 

 this point also with a view to rouse the interest of those members of 

 the Society who are given to Botanical pursuits, inasmuch as there 

 appears to be an unending field for very entertaining and useful 

 research. For the materials one has not to go very far. In the 

 rainy season we tread these plants under our feet, the carriage 

 wheels daily pass and repass over them near our stable door and our 

 garden gate. They invade our eye as we stand by the garden wall, 

 with the rich beautiful green of their foliage which the artist's 

 pencil can never imitate. They grow on the outer side of our flower 

 pots in isolated or close packed circlets. On dilapidated walls they 

 are more constant, growing from year to year, drying after the 

 monsoons. This, then, is their habitat. A moist ground or a 

 damp spot is necessary for their growth, and they are in their prime 

 in the monsoons. The ground may be clayey, sandy or chunam 

 mixed. With regard to their general appearance they are leafy 

 expansions — foliaceous. The roots of these plants are delicate and 

 silky so entering the ground as to form a web or network, thin and 

 friable, matted with the ground, rendering it difficult to preserve 

 the plant or set it free from the matrix-earth in which it grows. 

 Why the order to which the three plants belong is called hepaticas 

 I do not know. It is possible that from the lobed condition of the 

 frond and its resemblance to that organ in general shape the name 

 hepaticas might have been given. Otherwise there is nothing in 

 common between the liver and the liverworts. The natural order 

 hepaticas is allied to the mosses from which it differs in many 

 respects, mainly in this, that in most of the liverworts there is no stem 

 but simply a patch of green membrane spreading over the ground, 

 whereas in the mosses there is a stem often much branched. The, 

 hepaticas are sub-divided into the liverworts or marchantiaceae, the 

 scale mosses or Junger-manniaceae and the Crystlworts or Ricciaceas. 

 Thehepatics, especially plants of the last sub-division, are often con- 

 founded with lichens, but the lichens can be easily distinguished by 

 even a cursory microscopic examination. The plant depicted in Fig. I., 

 PI. No. I., is of dark green colour. The surface markings of the frond 

 are visible distinctly under an ordinary magnifier. Under the micro- 



