1 8 PROSERPINA. 



chaff, as on heads of wheat after being threshed. 

 I will hunt down that clue presently ; meantime 

 there is something else to be noticed on the old 

 brick. 



8. Out of its emerald green cushions of minute 

 leaves, there rise, here and there, thin red threads, 

 each with a little brown cap, or something like a 

 cap, at the top of it. These red threads shooting 

 up out of the green tufts, are, I believe, the 

 fructification of the moss ; fringing its surface 

 in the woods, and on the rocks, with the small 

 forests of brown stems, each carrying its pointed 

 cap or crest — of infinitely varied 'mode,' as we 

 shall see presently ; and, which is one of their 

 most blessed functions, carrying high the dew in 

 the morning ; every spear balancing its own crystal 

 globe. 



9. And now, with my own broken memories of 

 moss, and this unbroken, though unfinished, gift of 

 the noble labour of other people, the Flora Danica, 

 I can generalize the idea of the precious little plant, 

 for myself, and for the reader. 



All mosses, I believe, (with such exceptions and 

 collateral groups as we may afterwards discover, 

 but they are not many,) that is to say, some 

 thousands of species, are, in their strength of exist- 

 ence, composed of fibres surrounded by clusters of 



