1 6 TROSERPINA. 



they are more like pineapple leaves than anything 

 else. 



And it occurs to me, very unpleasantly, at the 

 same time, that I don't know what a pineapple is ! 



Stopping to ascertain that, I am told that a pine- 

 apple belongs to the ' Bromeliaceae ' — (can't stop to 

 find out what that means) — nay, that of these plants 

 " the pineapple is the representative " (Loudon) ; 

 "their habit is acid, their leaves rigid, and toothed 

 with spines, their bracteas often coloured with 

 scarlet, and their flowers either white or blue" — 

 (what are their flowers like ?) But the two sen- 

 tences that most interest me, are, that in the damp 

 forests of Carolina, the Tillandsia, which is an 

 ' epiphyte ' (*. e., a plant growing on other plants), 

 " forms dense festoons among the branches of the 

 trees, vegetating among the black mould that col- 

 lects upon the bark of trees in hot damp countries ; 

 other species are inhabitants of deep and gloomy 

 forests, and others form, with their spring leaves, 

 an impenetrable herbage in the Pampas of Brazil." 

 So they really seem to be a kind of moss, on a 

 vast scale. 



6. Next, I find in Gray,* Bromeliaceae, and — the 

 very thing I want — "Tillandsia, the black moss, 

 or long moss, which, like most Bromelias, grows on 

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



