xx INTRODUCTION. 



of La Charbonniere. Some are never found but upon the dung 

 of animals, of oxen, and particularly of foxes ; this is the case 

 with most of the species of the genus Splachnum. One of these, 

 the S. angustatum, which is commonly met with upon dung, we 

 once saw growing vigorously upon the foot of an old stocking, 

 near the summit of Ingleborough, Yorkshire; the same spe- 

 cies was found by a friend of ours, covering the half decayed 

 hat of a traveller who had perished on the mountain of St. Ber- 

 nard in Switzerland : and the same, if we mistake not, was dis- 

 covered by Captain Parry in Melville Island, vegetating in a 

 bleached skull of the Musk Ox. 



The trunks of trees, especially their north sides, have often a rich 

 covering of Mosses; and those, to the observant natives of American 

 wilds, are pretty sure guides to the points of the compass. Vari- 

 ous kinds of Neckera, Hypnum, and especially the genus Ortko- 

 trichum, insert their slender fibres into the crevices of the bark, 

 without, at the same time, appearing to do much injury to the 

 tree. On the contrary, they probably serve to protect the bark 

 from the inclemencies of winter, and the droughts of summer, as 

 they certainly do insects, which there take refuge at all seasons 

 of the year : and an Entomologist, by examining these tufts of 

 Mosses, especially among their roots, will find a number of rare 

 species to reward his labour. This circumstance has been beauti- 

 fully noticed by Linnaeus, when speaking of Mosses, in his Sy sterna 

 Vegetabilium. " Hse radices," he says, " incolarum fovent ; ne 

 adurantur a bruma hyberna ; ne exsiccantur a Sirio sestivo ; ne 

 evellantur a vicissitudine vernali ; ne corrumpantur a putramine 

 autumnali." So that nothing, not even the minutest vegetable, 

 seems to be made in vain. 



Scarcely any part of the world is destitute of Mosses, from the 

 Equinoctial Line to the Polar Regions. On the coasts of the 

 Icy Sea, in situations where the soil never thaws for more than 

 the depth of a few inches, Mosses and lichens are said by travel- 



