62 BEITISH MOSSES. 



flood ; without it we should have had no Mosses on the 

 confines of England and Scotland, and where would have 

 been the border warfare and the border minstrelsy ? where 

 the Moss hags in which the hunted Covenanters sought 

 for shelter and freedom of worship ? To come south- 

 ward, by force of its growth, the broad meadows of 

 Somerset have been built up, and the dark waters on 

 which the mysterious barge bore the dead Arthur from 

 Tintagel to Avalon have been turned into the green 

 pastures of Glastonbury and Meare and the battle-field of 

 Sedgmoor. 



Hepaticece. If my reader will once again refer to table 

 A, he will see that the Hepaticeae, the lowest group of 

 Mosses, when that word is used in its wider signification, 

 yet remain for some little notice. I am afraid that most 

 people slight them greatly, and feel little inclination to 

 examine them ; and yet they possess a beauty of their 

 own a great diversity of form, and points of great interest 

 and importance to the botanist. 



Popularly these little plants would probably be considered 

 Mosses, and it may be hard to say whether or no they 

 deserve the name, and so botanists use two Latin words 



FIGS. 34, 35, 36. Jungermanniee. ar, archegones ; 

 *, sporangium. After nature. A.F. 



