58 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



garment of vegetation than now ; but the number of 

 lichens is probably greater to-day than it was then, for 

 myriads of their spores now float in the air from scores of 

 different varieties, while formerly only a few were floated 

 to these barren hills. It is not improbable that the native 

 Indians used Cohasset lichens to make paints, for the pig- 

 ments of lichens have long been used by both savage and 

 civilized men for dyes. 



Their utility for the land, however, is not to be com- 

 pared with the usefulness of the mosses, which are next to 

 be considered. 



The mosses are a step higher than lichens in their struc- 

 ture and their reproductive system. They almost have 

 roots, and their stems and leaves are nearly as respectable 

 as those of a fern. However, they get their living, as the 

 lichens and algae, not through the roots, but by absorbing 

 it directly into the thallus. They can endure great cold, so 

 they hesitated not to come in colonies while the glacier was 

 lying in the swamps. The foggy atmosphere produced by 

 the cold ice fragments in those days was just their element. 

 They hastened to cover with velvet the clay hillsides, keep- 

 ing them from being too rapidly washed by the rains. 

 They caught the grains of soil which were loosened from 

 the rocks, and built up a vegetable mould by their own de- 

 cay which might produce higher plants. 



The work of the bog moss, for example, is shown im- 

 pressively in a place near the Beechwood schoolhouse. It 

 is the wet meadow that borders Bound Brook. Farmers 

 have dug down through this peat as deep as six feet only 

 to find the same dead moss all the way down. Indeed 

 poles have been thrust down to a depth of eighteen feet 

 through the soft bog. 



The moss is still growing at the top, while deep under- 

 neath are the remains of what grew many hundreds of 

 years ago. Beavers' homes are buried in the bog, and 

 their teeth marks are still to be seen upon the ends of the 



