MOSS. 15 



suddenly that they are more like pineapple leaves than any. 

 thing else. 



And it occurs to me, very unpleasantly, at the same time, 

 that I don't know what a pineapple is ! 



Stopping to ascertain that, I am told that a pineapple 

 belongs to the ' Brorneliaceae ' (can't stop to find out what 

 that means) nay, that of these plants "the pineapple is the 

 representative" (Loudon); "their habit is acid, their leaves 

 rigid, and toothed with spines, their bracteas often coloured 

 with scarlet, and their flowers either white or blue " (what 

 are their flowers like?) But the two sentences that most 

 interest me, are, that in the damp forests of Carolina, the Til- 

 landsia, which is an 'epiphyte ' (i.e., a plant growing on other 

 plants,) "forms dense festoons among the branches of the 

 trees, vegetating among the black mould that collects upon 

 the bark of trees in hot damp countries ; other species are in- 

 habitants of deep and gloomy forests, and others form, with 

 their spring leaves, an impenetrable herbage in the Pampas 

 of Brazil." So they really seem to be a kind of moss, on a 

 vast scale. 



6. Next, I find in Gray," Bromeliaceas, and the very thing 

 I want " Tillandsia, the black moss, or long moss, which, 

 like most Bromelias, grows on the branches of trees." So the 

 pineapple is really a moss ; only it is a moss that flowers but 

 'imperfectly.' "The fine fruit is caused by the consolidation 

 of the imperfect flowers." (I wish we could consolidate some 

 imperfect English moss-flowers into little pineapples then, 

 though they were only as big as filberts.) But we cannot 

 follow that farther now ; nor consider when a flower is per- 

 fect, and when it is not, or we should get into morals, and I 

 don't know where else ; we will go back to the moss I have 

 gathered, for I begin to see my way, a little, to understanding 

 it. 



7. The second piece I have on the table is a cluster an 

 inch or two deep of the moss that grows everywhere, and 

 that the birds use for nest-building, and we for packing, and 



* American, ' System of Botany,' the best technical book I have. 



