46 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1899. 



deductions ; but all were based on or related to acute, affec- 

 tionate interrogation of natural phenomena. 



As I entered the room, on my walk, she was all loaded and 

 ready with questions. Hardly had I closed the door — I always 

 let myself in — before I was seated, she was leaning forward 

 with expectant attitude : — " Has your father planted his peas 

 yet? He planted them the 17th of March last year. They 

 ought to be planted in the full of the moon," she would add 

 rather deprecatingly ; for I think she knew that was a part of 

 her creed I did not take much stock in — or, " Have you heard 

 the piping frogs yet? You have? I used to hear them in the 

 pond-hole here ; but my hearing isn't as good as it used to be." 

 Or, suiting the season, it might be, " Have the white oak trees 

 dropped their leaves yet? Father used to say that when the 

 white oak trees dropped their leaves, in the wood, the back of 

 winter was broken." Or, "Have you found any bloodroot 

 yet? or goldthread? or heard an oriole "? Something showing 

 that she was following the round of nature with interest. 



Any considerations which, under such untoward circum- 

 stances, make life not only bearable but enjoyable, seem worth 

 taking account of. 



To me, or any one who has studied the lichens and mosses, 

 they need no apology or practical considerations to bolster up 

 their claim to consideration. Like Emerson's Rhodora, they 

 are their own excuse for being. To one whose eyes have not 

 been anointed, they seem small and unimportant. I take 

 them up together in this talk, as they are often confounded, 

 and because their place in nature, the touches in color and 

 picturesqueness which they give the landscape, are much the 

 same in both. 



The leaves on mosses are one cell deep, and in them first 

 appears a vein — the first time in the evolution of leaves. The 

 shape and arrangement of the cells is called the leaf areolation, 

 and is very various but constant, becoming an important point 

 in classification. By spreading out a leaf under a lens of 

 sufficient power, as there is but a single layer of cells, we get 

 a full view of its structure, margin, apex, &c., and these are 



