I. MOSS. 27 



to assert anything positively in it from the first 

 page to the last. Whatever I say, is to be under- 

 stood 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 call them 

 names afterwards. I hope only for a contemptuous 

 heaping of coals on my head by correction of my 

 errors from them ; — in some cases, my scientific 

 friends will, I know, give me forgiving aid ; — but, 

 for many reasons, I am forced first to print the 

 imperfect statement, as I can independently shape 

 it; for if once I asked for, or received help, every 

 thought would be frost-bitten into timid expression, 



as the leaves of a tree become wood, so the leaves of a moss 

 become earth, while yet a normal part of the plant. Here is a cake 

 in my hand weighing half a pound, bright green on the surface, 

 with minute crisp leaves ; but an inch thick beneath in what looks 

 at first like clay, but is indeed knitted fibre of exhausted moss. 

 Also, I don't at all find the generalization I made from the botani- 

 cal books likely to have occurred to me from the real things. No 

 moss leaves that I can find here give me the idea of resemblance to 

 pineapple leaves ; nor do I see any, through my weak lens, clearly ser- 

 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, 

 magnified, 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. 



