PECULIAR PLANTS. 113 



in them, especially casks that have been filled with wine and other 

 kinds of liquor, and even wine itself, produce peculiar vegetables. 



Particular plants are produced on the borders of the ocean, as the 

 solem or maratime plants, and also near salt licks ; these are the salt- 

 worts and glassworts. They abound in parts of our western country, 

 on the Atlantic and in the interior of Africa and Russia. Marine 

 plants inhabit exclusively the seashore and are the sea-wracks, and 

 others of the algce, fuci, ulvce, etc. Aquatic plants grow in fresh 

 water ; stagnant and running waters also abound in plants of various 

 kinds, many growing beneath the surface, but all, with one exception, 

 the awlwort, rising to the top of the water where they flower, to prop- 

 agate their species. There are likewise numerous marsh, or swamp 

 plants, meadow and pasture plants and field plants. Many of the lat- 

 ter are introduced in sowing grain. Rock plants are those found on 

 stone walls as well as upon rocks. Many upon the latter are in con- 

 siderable perfection ; and the mosses upon the former are very exten- 

 sive, and some are eaten. There are likewise sand plants and those 

 of dry moors and heaths. There is an important class of plants which 

 follow and attach themselves to places inhabited by man, such as the nettle, 

 dock, etc., which proceed even to the highest mountains in following 

 human settlements. The forest plants are among those living in so- 

 ciety. Hedge plants are numerous and well known. Subterranean 

 plants, too, are numerous and important, growing in mines and caves, 

 and one yielding a strong phosphoric light. There is also a large 

 class of mountain or alpine plants, varying in their character, size and 

 peculiarity of location. The parasites are a remarkable class : they 

 attach themselves to portions of other living plants and derive their 

 nourishment from them. These are the miseltoes, a species of the co- 

 ranthus, and the rafflesia arnoldii, the most wonderful of all products. 

 Many fungi likewise subsist on the leaves of plants, some exclusively 

 on the lower and others on the upper sides. A very extensive class 

 of plants is composed of those denominated pseudo-parasites, securing 

 themselves by roots to the decayed branches and trunks of trees, as 

 lichens, mosses, etc., but obtaining their food chiefly from the atmos- 

 phere. Among these is a numerous and remarkable family called 

 air plants. 



The dispersion of plants, whatever the means may be by which it is 

 effected, is constantly going on. Islands in the neighborhood of con- 

 tinents of apparently the same soil contain the same species, but they 

 are not possessed of all the same varieties. This would indicate that 

 they have been separated from the main land and that the diffusion of 

 seeds has been interrupted by the intermediate water. Many plants 

 are thus bounded in Europe by portions of sea, though they reach 

 moxe distant parts in the same direction by land. Volcanic islands, 

 rising up naked, are in a few years covered with vegetation by the 

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