I. MOSS. 



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the branches of trees." So the pineapple is really 

 a moss ; only it is a moss that flowers but ' im- 

 perfectly.' "The fine fruit is caused by the con- 

 solidation 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 understanding it. 



7. The second piece I have on the table is a 

 cluster — an inch or two deep — of the moss that 

 grows everywhere, and that the birds use for 

 nest-building, and we for packing, and the like. 

 It is dry, since yesterday, and its fibres define 

 themselves against the dark ground in warm 

 green, touched with a glittering light. Note that 

 burnished lustre of the minute leaves ; they are 

 necessarily always relieved against dark hollows, 

 and this lustre makes them much clearer and 

 brighter than if they were of dead green. In 

 that lustre — and it is characteristic of them — they 

 differ wholly from the dead, aloe-like texture of 

 the pineapple leaf; and remind me, as I look 

 at them closely, a little of some conditions of 



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