828 LESS IMPORTANT MINOR PRODUCE. 



Zostera marina belonging to the Nat. Order Naiades and termed 

 grass-wrack by Hooker. It is abundant, at or below low-water 

 mark around the British Isles, on sandy or muddy edges of 

 the sea and is often thrown up in large quantities by the 

 tide. Tr.] 



Rushes are used chiefly as packing-material for bottles of 

 superior wine, and for the seats of chairs. Share-grass 

 (Equisetwii) is used for polishing furniture, and is largely 

 exported from Germany, to Greece, Turkey, and Hungary. 



2. Mosses. 



Polytrichum commune, a moss often growing a foot high in 

 wet places, is used for making brushes that are fashionable in 

 France, the material chiefly coming from Germany. The 

 moss is cut in the forest, tied in thin bundles and steeped like 

 flax ; it is rolled on ribbed planks, again heated to render 

 it pliable, and is then ready for use for weavers' -brushes, 

 scrubbing-brushes, carpet-brushes, etc. The roots of the 

 common crowberry (Empetrum nigrum. L.) and of Polytrichum 

 commune and P. urnigerum also are used for brushes, velvet 

 brushes being made from the latter in Khenish Prussia. 



Tamarisk-moss (Hypnum tamariscinum) is largely used in 

 the manufacture of artificial flowers, Hypnum splendens being 

 less valuable. Tamarisk-moss is found chiefly in beech forests, 

 and the other moss among conifers ; they are collected in 

 summer, kept dry under cover, and during winter the separate 

 fronds are cleaned, pressed between leaves of paper, sorted, 

 dyed and packed.* Sphagnum-moss also is used for the 

 transport of living plants. Mosses are gathered by hand, with 

 or without permits. 



3. Edible Fungi. 



The truffle (Tuber melanosporum) is the most valuable of 

 edible fungi ; it is found chiefly in oak, hornbeam, hazel, beech 

 and ash forests, its mycelium being parasitic on the roots of 

 the trees, a few centimeters underground, in damp, rich, 

 calcareous soils of the warmer parts of France and Germany. 



* " Dankelmann's Zeitechrif t," iv., \>. l.v.. 



