90 MOSSES AND LIVERWORTS 



plants may spring. Three of these "bulbils," 

 more highly magnified, are shown at fig. 13 of 

 the same plate. In all these cases it is evident 

 that, as some of the ordinary stages of develop- 

 ment are omitted, the circle of the plant's life- 

 history is completed more speedily and directly 

 than where, starting with the spore, the various 

 steps that we have been tracing culminating in 

 the ripened capsule are one by one followed out ; 

 for we have a plant producing buds, which in 

 their turn give rise to the thread-like protonema, 

 from which fresh plants may spring, bearing buds, 

 which are ready to begin again the same round 

 of life. Here, then, the reproductive organs, 

 capsule, and spores are absent, and the process 

 of reproduction is effected in a far simpler 

 manner. Sometimes we even find a young moss 

 plant springing direct from one of the leaves of 

 the mother plant, when, of course, all intermediate 

 stages are omitted, and we may have plant 

 succeeding plant in endless succession. These 

 instances will serve to show Nature's marvellous 

 fertility in this particular part of her wide 

 domain ; indeed, when one realises the apparently 

 almost infinite possibilities for multiplication 

 which these little plants possess, one is tempted 

 to wonder that there is any room left on the 

 face of the earth for anything but mosses ! 



Leaves, In the course of what has already 

 been said, reference has frequently been made to 



