80 MOSSES AND LIVERWORTS 



wall, where, one would imagine, it would find 

 considerable difficulty in getting sufficient nourish- 

 ment to keep life going ; yet here it will nourish 

 and produce an abundance of fruit. My drawing 

 was made from a perfectly dry capsule, and still 

 the peristome teeth are standing erect. I know 

 of no more beautiful sight of its kind than a tuft of 

 this moss, when seen through a good magnifying- 

 glass, as I saw the small colony of plants from 

 which my specimen was gathered, growing on a 

 wall in Dove Dale,* one typical March day, with a 

 keen east wind blowing, and everything looking 

 so pinched and dried, that it was difficult to believe 

 that the dark, shrivelled substance on the stone 

 before me had any life left in it. A glance 

 through the lens, however, soon showed that it 

 was very much alive, for nestling among the 

 dusky leaves could be seen numbers of these 

 beautiful little capsules, in various stages of 

 development, many of them with the teeth of the 

 peristome standing erect, like so many dainty 

 coral stars. But let a shower of rain come, and 

 these coral stars would disappear, owing to the 

 closing down of the peristome teeth. 



In many of the members of the Bristle-moss 

 (Orthotrichum) family we may see the open 

 peristome under dry conditions shown much more 

 clearly. Thus, fig. 4 of Plate V.a gives the top of 

 a capsule of the Wood Bristle-moss ( Orthotrichum 

 affine), and here the teeth are actually bent back, 



