108 MOSSES AND LIVERWORTS 



congenial to them. If mosses are, as a rule, 

 moisture-loving plants, much more may this be 

 said of liverworts ; and hence it is that to find 

 them in the greatest luxuriance, and to see them 

 in the full enjoyment of life, we ought to seek 

 them in some of the moister parts of the Lake 

 District or of Wales, or, better still, in the 

 Emerald Isle, the home par excellence of many of 

 the rarer species. In the shade of the woods ; 

 on the rocks of a rivulet splashed by the water ; 

 on the wet banks of dykes, drains, and ditches ; in 

 the shelter of the hedgerows ; in the boggy and 

 marshy ground on the borders of some pool or 

 lake; in these and similar localities many kinds 

 may frequently be met with. Others to a large 

 extent confine themselves to the trunks and 

 branches of trees, while not a few of the smaller 

 and more dainty forms are often found growing 

 in close company with mosses, creeping in and 

 out amongst the slender stems and pale, green 

 leaves, and not uncommonly looking very much 

 like fine white thread. 



Let us, with the help of Plate VIII., take a 

 glance at some of the commoner kinds, and we 

 shall thus obtain a better idea of their general 

 appearance and structure ; and the fact that all 

 the figures in the plate (with the exception of 

 fig. 20, which is about life-size) have been drawn 

 to the same scale, namely, five and a half times 

 larger than the originals, will give some idea of 



