THE PAGE OF NATURE. 23 



summer day in little rippling waves, like smiles and 

 thoughts over a human face ! What can be pleasanter 

 than the soft yielding carpets of greenest verdure and 

 weirdest patterns, woven by these tiny plants on the 

 floor of shadowy old forests, " stealing all noises from 

 the foot," and imbuing the mind with reverence and 

 awe in the pillared aisles of nature's cathedrals ! What 

 can be more picturesque than the varied hues which 

 mosses impart to the ivied ruin, the grey old wall, or 

 the decaying tree ; or what object can be more romantic 

 than a fantastic rock crowned with pines or birches, with 

 mosses hanging down in waving clusters from its edge, 

 and forming beautiful festoons like draperies of green 

 and brown silk over the pillars of some oriental palace ! 

 Truly these little plants originated in a high ideal of 

 creative wisdom and love. 



Mosses belong to the foliaceous or highest division 

 of flowerless plants. Although consisting entirely of 

 cellular tissue, and increasing by simple additions of 

 matter to the growing point or the apex of parts already 

 formed, they point to far higher orders of vegetation; 

 they are prefigurations of the flowering plants, epitomes 

 of archetypes in trees and flowers. There is nothing 

 in the appearance or structure of the lichens, fungi, 

 or algse, to remind us of higher plants ; they form, as 

 it were, a strange microcosm of their own a per- 

 fectly distinct and peculiar order of vegetable exist- 

 ence ; but when we ascend a step higher and come 

 to the mosses, we find for the first time the rudimental 

 characters and distinctions of root, stem, branches, 

 and leaves we recognise an ideal exemplar of the 



