18 PEOSEEPINA. 



is too small, not indeed for our respect, hut for our com- 

 prehension, we magnify it, Fig. 2, c, and thereupon per- 

 ceive it to be indeed composed of, a, the small fibrous 

 root which sustains the plant; J, the leaf -surrounded 

 stem which is the actual being, and main creature, moss ; 

 and, 0, the aspirant pillar, and cap, of its fructification. 



11. But there is one minor division yet. You see I 

 have drawn the central part of the moss plant (, Fig. 2,) 

 half in outline and half in black ; and that, similarly, 

 in the upper group, which is too small to show the 

 real roots, the base of the cluster is black. And you re- 

 member, I doubt not, how often in gathering what most 

 invited gathering, of deep green, starry, perfectly soft 

 and living wood-moss, you found it fall asunder in your 

 hand into multitudes of separate threads, each with its 

 bright green crest, and long root of blackness. 



That blackness at the root though only so notable in 

 this wood-moss and collateral species, is indeed a general 

 character of the mosses, with rare exceptions. It is their 

 funeral blackness ; that, I perceive, is the way the moss 

 leaves die. They do not fall they do not visibly decay. 

 But they decay mvisibly, in continual secession, beneath 

 the ascending crest. They rise to form that crest, all 

 green and bright, and take the light and air from those 

 out of which they grew ; and those, their ancestors, 

 darken and die slowly, and at last become a mass of 

 mouldering ground. In fact, as I perceive farther, their 

 final duty is so to die. The main work of other leaves ie 



