I. MOSS. 15 



bracteas often coloured with scarlet, and their flowers 

 either white or blue" (what are their flowers like?) 

 But the two sentences that most interest me, are, that in 

 the damp forests of Carolina, the Tillandsia, which is an 

 4 epiphyte ' (i.e., a plant growing on other plants,) " forms 

 dense festoons among the branches of the trees, vegetat- 

 ing among the black mould that collects upon the bark 

 of trees in hot damp countries ; other species are inhabi- 

 tants of deep and gloomy forests, and others form, with 

 their spring leaves, an impenetrable herbage in the Pam- 

 pas of Brazil." So they really seem to be a kind of moss, 

 on a vast scale. 



6. Next, I find in Gray,* Bromeliacese, and the very 

 thing I want " Tillandsia, the black moss, or long moss, 

 which, like most JBromelias, grows on the branches of 

 trees." So the pineapple is really a moss ; only it is a 

 moss that flowers but k imperfectly.' " The fine fruit is 

 caused by the consolidation of the imperfect flowers." 

 (I wish we could consolidate some imperfect English 

 moss-flowers into little pineapples then, though they 

 were only as big as filberts.) But we cannot follow that 

 farther now ; nor consider when a flower is perfect, and 

 when it is not, or we should get into morals, and I don't 

 know where else ; we will go back to the moss I have 

 gathered, for I begin to see my way, a little, to under- 

 standing it. 



* American, ' System of Botany,' the best technical book I have. 



