456 The Living Plant 



south, is also a Flowering Plant (belonging to the Pineapple 

 Family); but the somewhat similar tree moss, or "Long Moss" 

 of the northern woods ("The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, 

 bearded with moss . . . stand like Druids of eld") is a Lichen, 

 as is the "Reindeer Moss" of the far northern plains. The "Sea- 

 mosses" are Algae, as we have seen, and so are a lot of the moss- 

 like little plants of fresh waters. Then the creeping Ground Pine 

 of our woods, known even botanically as a "Club-moss," is not 

 a Moss at all but a Fern-plant, of the group next to be studied. 

 Furthermore, even Flowering Plants, especially in open moun- 

 tainous regions, but including some kinds nearer home, like the 

 Pyxie, assume often the moss habit, and therefore the moss aspect, 

 to a degree often completely deceptive were it not for their tell- 

 tale flowers which appear at some season. 



We turn now to the place of the Moss-plants in our tree of 

 descent (figure 177). There is no question as to their origin from 

 the Algae, which, among a great number of branches, must have 

 given rise to one with a structure permitting the absorption of 

 gases from the air instead of the water. Thus was opened up to 

 those plants an immense new field not then possessed by any 

 other plants whatsoever, all the surface of still waters and the 

 moister parts of the land, which latter were then, it is likely, far 

 more extensive than now. Over the land, accordingly, these 

 plants proceeded to expand as a dense living carpet, then the 

 most conspicuous part of the earth's vegetation. So, our diagram 

 shows their particular branch swinging into the main trunk, 

 thereby displacing the Algae to a lateral limb ; and from that time 

 to the present these Moss-plants have persisted supreme in their 

 own situation, giving off, however, from the simpler Liverworts 

 the more complicated Mosses. 



The Fern-plants, or Pteridophytes. These are typical under- 

 growth plants, most at home in the shade of the woods, where they 

 occupy a place above the carpet of Moss-plants, and beneath the 

 canopy of the forest, though like all other groups they reach far 



