22 



BRITISH MOSSES. 



one of the most striking peculiarities of the Mosses is the 

 vast variety of their modes of reproduction. 



Fig. 10 represents the upper part of the leaf of a small 

 Moss the Orihotriclium phyllanihum. It 

 is a Moss which grows on some of our 

 coasts. I have gathered it in abundance 

 amongst the nests of the sea-fowl on the 

 Fame Islands, and again on the basalt rocks 

 under Dunstanborough Castle, also on the 

 coast of Northumberland. It affects great 

 elevations as well as the sea level. It has 

 been found high on Chimborazo, though 

 Mr. Whymper did not meet with it there ; 

 it grows in great size on Cape Horn ; it 

 does not despise trees near the sea-shore 

 as a home. This world- wide little plant 

 rarely produces capsules, so rarely that 

 they have only once or twice been seen, 

 and that only quite recently ; but in lieu 

 of spores, it is reproduced by articulated cells or gemmae, 

 which cluster round the ends of its leaves ; these drop off 

 and produce protonema, from which the plant grows just 

 as if the protonema had arisen from a spore. 



Now, except in the very rare case of this plant producing 

 a cell, the life-history of the plant differs widely from the 

 one we have already considered the Moss plant. The 

 vegetable with its stalk and leaves is there, but there are 

 no archegones, nor antherids, no fertilized oosphere, no 

 sporogone, no capsule, and no spore ; the whole sporophytic 

 generation is excluded ; the life is a short circuit which 



FlG. W.Ortho- 

 trichum phyl- 

 lanthum, with 

 gemmae, after 

 Schimper. 



