PROSERPINA. 



CHAPTEK L 



MOSS. 



DENMARK HILL, 3rd November, 1868. 



1. IT is mortifying enough to write, but I think thus 

 much ought to be written, concerning myself, as ' the author 

 of Modern Painters/ In three months I shall be fifty years 

 old : and I don't at this hour ten o'clock in the morning of 

 the two hundred and sixty-eighth day of my forty-ninth year 

 know what ' moss ' is. 



There is nothing I have more intended to know some day 

 or other. But the moss ' would always be there ' ; and then 

 it was so beautiful, and so difficult to examine, that one could 

 only do it in some quite separated time of happy leisure 

 which came not. I never was like to have less leisure than 

 now, but I will know what moss is, if possible, forthwith. 



2. To that end I read preparatorily, yesterday, what ac- 

 count I could find of it in all the botanical books in the house. 

 Out of them all, I get this general notion of a moss, that it 

 has a fine fibrous root, a stem surrounded with spirally set 

 leaves, and produces its fruit in a small case, under a cap. 

 I fasten especially, however, on a sentence of Louis Figuier's, 

 about the particular species, Hypnum : 



"These mosses, which often form little islets of verdure at 

 the feet of poplars and willows, are robust vegetable organ- 

 isms, which do not decay." * 



3. "Qui ne pourrissent point." What do they do with 

 themselves, then ? it immediately occurs to me to ask. And, 

 secondly, If this immortality belongs to the Hypnum only ? 



* "Histoire des Plantes." Ed. 1865, p. 416. 



