INTRODUCTION TO CllYPTOGAMIC BOTANY. 469 



mosses have been found in amber ; otherwise there are no 

 certain traces of them in fossil remains. 



516. The uses of mosses are for the most part unimportant, 

 Polytrichum, however, supphes mats, brooms, and other im- 

 plements. Dicranum condensatum, with its confervoid root- 

 lets, is used by the Esquimaux for lamp-wicks. A few spe- 

 cies are excellent for packing or caulking wooden structures ; 

 while Sphagnum supplies materials for mattrasses ; and the 

 Laplanders use it instead of clothes for their new-born babes. 

 Polytrichum was formerly considered diuretic, and Sphagnum 

 sometimes enters into the composition of bread in Lapland. 

 In the economy of nature they form an important part, con- 

 stituting often the first vegetation on exposed soil, while Sphag- 

 num by its rapid growth contributes greatly to the formation 

 of peat mossses, and almost all the species act upon the atmo- 

 sphere in the same way as Phsenogams. 



517. The arrangement proposed by Montague, in his admi- 

 rable article in Orbigny's Dictionary, is that Avhich I shall 

 principally follow in the short remarks I have to make on 

 the structure of the different groups. It does not profess to 

 be perfect ; but it is perhaps the best adapted for the student, 

 and is almost identical with that adopted from Bruch and 

 Schimper, in the last edition of the Muscologia Britannica.* 



518. Mosses are divisible into five principal groups, of very 

 different comparative magnitudes : Those whose sporangium 

 splits into valves, like Jungermanniw ; species with fasciculate 

 branches ; those in which the fruit terminates the principal 

 divisions of the stem ; those in which it is seated on short 

 special branches ; and finally, those in which it is lateral, 

 whether on the stem or branches. 



Schistocarpi. — Fruit splitting into valves. 



Syncladei. — Branches fasciculate. 



Acrocarpi. — Fruit terminal. 



Cladocarpi. — Fruit terminating short special branchlets. 



Pleurocarpi. —Yvuii lateral. 



* Bryologia Britannica, by William Wilson, 1855. This work is con- 

 ducted throughout on the most accurate scientific principles, and no 

 single page of it can be consulted without profit. 



