180 MOSS FUNGI. 



Mention some other useful plants of the family of grasses. 



Can you enumerate some of the principal garden vege- 

 tables'? 



For what purposes are flax, hemp, rape, and hops culti- 

 vated 1 



What vegetables are cultivated for feeding cattle ? 



LESSON XL. 



MOSS FUNGI FERNS LICHENS SEA-WEED. 



THE reader has been told that most plants pro- 

 duce flowers. There is, however, one portion of 

 the vegetable kingdom, on which flowers are never 

 seen, and this embraces mosses, fungi, or the mush- 

 room tribe, lichens, ferns, and sea-weeds. 



A bed of moss consists of a great number of very 

 small and very beautiful plants. Bare rocks, coral- 

 reefs, swamps, bogs, and other situations, where 

 larger vegetables would not grow, are covered with 

 moss ; these, by their decay, form a stratum, or 

 layer of soil, which in course of time becomes 

 planted with the seeds of grass and other herbs, 

 and thus barren places are made fertile, by the 

 agency of these apparently useless objects. 



Fungi are those fleshy bodies which are found 

 so plentifully upon decaying wood, in damp and 

 shady places. Many of them grow to a conside- 

 rable size, and are of a beautiful colour. Great 

 numbers of these curious vegetable productions 

 may be found, by examining an old wood-heap at 



