of a landscape Is apparent when one takes a walk among the 

 haunts of mosses during a drought, when rocks and logs and 

 soil are dry and brown and bare because the mosses have folded 

 up their tiny leaves close to the stems to retard evaporation. 

 Take the same walk after a soaking rain, and the leaves are 

 unfolded and spread, and stones, trees and old stumps are radiant 

 in living green. This habit of the mosses of taking up and re- 

 taining moisture makes them valuable not only as creatures 

 of beauty but of utility in the economy of nature. "To them, 

 slow-fingered, constant-hearted, has been intrusted the weaving 

 of the dark eternal tapestries of the hills." 



And how common they are! In all countries, at all altitudes, 

 in swamps and on dry wastes and hillsides, on soil and submerged 

 in fresh water, they find their quiet way. But they halt at 

 the seashore. Seaweeds are not mosses. 



And yet, because they are so small and meek, they have been 

 overlooked by the wayfaring man who thinks of moss as something 

 green and beautiful but too small to suggest the astonishing num- 

 ber of species, — several hundred to be found in the United States 

 alone. "Nature," says some one, "made ferns as leaves to 

 show what she could do in that line." Just a superficial mi- 

 croscopic examination suggests that nature must have made 

 mosses to show what she could do with plants in miniature, for 

 their tiny leaves are as wonderfully shaped, the margins often 

 serrated, and their capsules are as exquisitely molded and 

 carved and painted as are the leaves and fruits of the better 

 known, larger and statelier seed-bearing plants. 



While it requires the use of a microscope to make any extensive 

 study of the mosses, many species can be identified by the aid 

 of a simple hand-lens, and the species mentioned in this article 

 can be recognized by one having ordinarily good eyesight. 

 How much it adds to walks through mountain woods to be able 

 to meet as friends even twenty mosses conspicuous for size and 

 beauty, only he who has that delightful acquaintance can 

 appreciate. 



Beginners are apt to confuse mosses and lichens and hepatics, 

 calling them all mosses because they are frequently found 



