14: PROSERPINA. 



It certainly does not, by any means : but, however modified 

 or limited, this immortality is the first thing we ought to take 

 note of in the mosses. They are, in some degree, what the 

 "everlasting" is in flowers. Those minute green leaves of 

 theirs do not decay, nor fall. 



But how do they die, or how stop growing, then ? it is the 

 first thing I want to know about them. And from all the 

 books in the house, I can't as yet find out this. Meanwhile I 

 will look at the leaves themselves. 



4. Going out to the garden, I bring in a bit of old brick, 

 emerald green on its rugged surface,* and a thick piece of 

 mossy turf. 



First, for the old brick : To think of the quantity of pleas- 

 ure one has had in one's life from that emerald green velvet, 

 and yet that for the first time to-day I am verily going to 

 look at it ! Doing so, through a pocket lens of no great 

 power, I find the velvet to be composed of small star-like 

 groups of smooth, strong, oval leaves, in- 

 tensely green, and much like the young 

 leaves of any other plant, except in this ; 

 they all have a long brown spike, like a 

 sting, at their ends. 



5. Fastening on that, I take the Flora 

 Danica,f and look through its plates of 

 mosses, for their leaves only ; and I find, 

 first, that this spike, or strong central rib, 

 is characteristic ; secondly, that the said 

 leaves are apt to be not only spiked, but 

 serrated, and otherwise angry-looking at the points ; thirdly, 

 that they have a tendency to fold together in the centre (Fig. 

 1 J) ; and at last, after an hour's work at them, it strikes me 



* The like of it I have now painted, Number 281, CASE xn. f in the 

 Educational Series of Oxford. 



f Properly, Florae Danicae, but it is so tiresome to print the diph-, 

 thongs that I shall always call it thus. It is a folio series, exquisitely 

 begun, a hundred years ago ; and not yet finished. 



| Maguii**J aheu* saven tupos. See note at end of this chapter. 



