PKOSEKPJNA. 



ment grows, separately from root to cap, through the 

 spirally set leaves. And meanwhile I don't know very 

 clearly so much as what a root is or what a leaf is. 

 Before puzzling myself any farther in examination either 

 of moss or any other grander vegetable, I had better 

 define these primal forms of all vegetation, as well as I 

 can or rather begin the definition of them, for future 

 completion and correction. For, as my reader must 

 already sufficiently perceive, this book is literally to be 

 one of studies not of statements. Some one said of me 

 once, very shrewdly, When he wants to work out a sub- 

 ject, he writes a book on it. That is a very true saying in 

 the main, I work down or up to my mark, and let the 

 reader see process and progress, not caring to conceal 

 them. But this book will be nothing but process. I don't 

 mean to assert anything positively in it from the first page 

 to the last. Whatever I say, is to be understood only as a 

 conditional statement liable to, and inviting, correction. 

 And this the more because, as on the whole, I am at war 

 with the botanists, I can't ask them to help me, and then 



rated ; but I do find a general tendency to run into a silky filamentous 

 structure, and in some, especially on a small one gathered from the 

 fissures in the marble of the cathedral, white threads of considerable 

 length at the extremities of the leaves, of which threads I remember 

 no drawing or notice in the botanical books. Figure 1 represents, mag- 

 nified, a cluster of these leaves, with the germinating stalk springing 

 from their centre ; but my scrawl was tired and careless, and for once.. 

 Mr. Burgess has copied too accurately. 



