SEED AND BOOT 



165 



Photo ly] 



FIG. 202. GREATER WATER-MOSS. 



Fontinalis antipyretica is found chiefly in running streams, attached 

 to stones and wood. Very few of the true Mosses are aquatic. 



passages in Modern Painters, 

 might be commended to all 

 such, and we offer no apology 

 for quoting the famous pas- 

 sage : " Meek creatures ! " he 

 calls them, "the first mercy of 

 the earth, veiling with hushed 

 softness its dmtless rocks ; 

 creatures full of pity, covering 

 with strange and tender honour 

 the scarred disgrace of ruin, 

 laying quiet finger on the 

 trembling stones to teach them 

 rest. No words, that I know 

 of, will say what these Mosses 

 are. None are delicate enough, 

 none perfect enough, none rich 

 enough. How is one to tell of 

 the furred and rounded bosses 

 of beaming green the starred 

 divisions of rubied bloom, fine- 

 filmed, as if the rock-spirits 



could spin porphyry as we do glass the traceries of intricate silver, the 

 fingers of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre into 

 fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and 

 passive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace ? They will not 

 be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; but of these the wild 

 bird will make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow. And as they are 

 the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us ; when all other service 

 is in vain, from plant and tree, the soft Mosses and grey Lichen take up 

 their watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing 

 grasses, have done their part for a time ; but these do service for ever. 

 Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the 

 granary, moss for the grave." 



A still higher scale of Vegetable Life is reached in the Ferns. The 

 spores of ferns are contained in a capsule or sporange (fig. '207), dense clusters 

 of which form, when ripe, those brownish patches or incrustations on the 

 under sides of the fronds, familiarly known as the " fructification," 

 botanically as sori. Each of the brown patches is, in fact, a sorus : and 

 consists of a dense cluster of sporangia, or spore-containing vessels (fig. 208). 

 When the spores have escaped from these vessels, and begin to germinate 

 in the moist earth, they do not put forth delicate filaments like the Fungi 

 and Mosses, but each produces a small green leafy expansion, which is 

 known as the prothallus (fig. 209). From the under side of the prothallus 



