INTRODUCTION. 



16 



Section II. 

 THE ASPECTS OF MOSSES. 



Annihilating all that's made, 



To a green thought in a green shade. 



Andrew Marvell. 



OR learning the aspects of mosses no better way could be devised 

 than taking a walk in the conntry, and looking at every one we 

 find. For, though mosses are finest and most abimdant among 

 the hiUs, types of their principal forms may be seen in every 

 district, and we may begin our examination with a moss/ which, in aU probability, 

 grows on the first waU we come to. It is in round green cushions, velvet-like, 

 covered with little grey hairs, and rising from it are brown threads touched with 

 orange. On looking more closely we see that our cushion consists of a multitude 

 of stars, set very closely together in a pattern which would serve for the back- 

 ground of an illumination. If we puU the tuft up we can separate the stars. By 

 what have we pulled it ? By the brown threads. These end in an enlargement, 

 finished in a curved point; detach one, and you have a perfect moss-plant; a 

 root, then a star of green leaves, from the centre of which leaves rises a fruit- 

 stalky this ending in a seed-vessel. From another plant the little pointed cap of 

 the seed-vessel has come off on your finger. But with cap and head just at 

 present we have nothing to do ; all that we have to remember is that mosses, 

 bearing their fruit from the centre and summit of the plant, are in general formation 

 like this one ; they are usually found on stones or on the earth, and are pretty 

 firmly attached to whatever they grow upon ; both from being so closely packed 

 together, and from their having just root enough to hold them. The great 

 rambling, shaggy, fleecy mosses in the hedges, and the thick carpets under the 

 trees, have also their distinctive featm-es. 



To find these mosses, let us go on to that avenue of oaks. Pleasant it looks 



' Tortula muralis. 



