126 MOSSES AND LIVERWORTS 



their ultimate fertilisation, so careful do we find 

 that Nature always is to provide for the con- 

 tinuance of the race. In the frondose liverworts 

 the cup, when produced (and it is only in certain 

 of them that it is formed at all), will be found 

 growing on the face of the frond. 



In some few of the mosses we meet with some- 

 thing which, in outside form, at all events, is 

 strongly suggestive of this leafy envelope. This 

 fact is well exemplified in fig. 8 of Plate IV., 

 which is a drawing of a fruiting plant of one of 

 our common Bog-mosses, the Spreading-leaved 

 Bog-moss (Sphagnum squarrosum), and shows the 

 curious urn-shaped capsule at the end of a some- 

 what large fruit-stalk (which, by the way, re- 

 minds one much more of the fruit-stalk of a 

 liverwort than that of a moss), surrounded by 

 the large perichoetial leaves, which in this in- 

 stance have a very distinctly cup-like appear- 

 ance ; indeed, one has only to imagine two or 

 three of these large leaves growing together by 

 their edges in order to realise how close the 

 resemblance is. The same thing is found in the 

 members of that small group of rock-growing 

 mosses, to which, as we have seen, the family 

 name of Andrecea has been given ; a portion of 

 one of them is given at Plate VI. fig. 6, and 

 shows the capsule rising from the centre of a 

 cluster of the large sheathing leaves, which again 

 suggest the same idea. 



