

MOSSES. CHAP. IU 



SECTION II. 



Reproductive Organs. 



Mosses THE fructification of the Mosses, though ex- 

 to'orfgi- tremely elegant in its structure, is yet, at the same- 

 putrefac- ^ me 5 * extremely minute as to be but seldom 

 tiou noticed except by botanists ; by whom also it seems 

 to have been long overlooked, or at the most but 

 imperfectly investigated. The ancients who be- 

 lieved in the doctrine of equivocal generation, re- 

 garded the Mosses as a tribe of plants originating in 

 the putrefaction of other vegetables, or in the acci- 

 dental concourse of generative particles collected 

 together by the alluvion of rains or rivers, and con- 

 And to be sequently as producing no flower or fruit. The 

 flower and earlier botanists of modern times seem to have re- 

 seed - garded them in much the same light ; and even the 

 great and illustrious Tournefort, who published his 

 Botanical Institutions about the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century, when the doctrine of equivocal 

 generation had begun to be more than suspected, 

 and the doctrine of vegetable sexes admitted, at 

 least in part, classes them along with Mushrooms 

 and Sea-weed, under the title of Aspermce or plants 

 without seed. But this arrangement was now no 

 longer regarded as being at all satisfactory ; and 

 botanists, who began to suspect that a distinction 

 existed even in Mosses, were at last induced to un- 

 dertake the irksome but indispensable task of a 



