16 BRITISH M088E8. 



at a distance, pleasanter is it to get there. The red of the "wet, fallen oak leaves 

 is magnificent ; there the wet reflects the sky colour, and the leaf is deep purple. 

 Oh ! what it *s to hear the dead leaves rustle under your feet ! Do you not 

 remember, when we were children, how each of us tried which could make the 

 most noise with them ? From under the red and purple we catch gleams of green, 

 like emeralds, — like that brighter, purer green yet of the chrysoprasus, which 

 tells us what the colouring of heaven will be ; but in the falling of the light upon 

 it, the deep, velvet shade, the brilliant lustre, that gleam of green moss is like a 

 hunamiag-bird's breast. And as the feathers on a bird's breast, the feathers of 

 the moss lie over one another. Feather-mosses everywhere, like Mexican 

 hangings upon the tree-trunks, ia mats about their roots, making the hedges 

 beautiful. Pull a tuft of feathers from this golden green mantle.' The plumy 

 things have bright red stems, branching off on each side and branching again, and 

 aU are covered with amber, close set, shining scales ; and from the middle of the 

 main stem, not at its end, grows a brown, thread-like fruit-stalk, ending in what 

 is very like the head and beak of a bird. The feather mosses have always the 

 fruit on the sides of the branches. 



A type of a third form will be seen in any swamp or bog. It is a loose-made, 

 coarse-looking, whitish-brown moss,^ which bears its fruit at the ends of short 

 branches; the plant having much the form of a candelabra. Under the three 

 heads, therefore, of star, feather, and candelabra, we may, for the present, arrange 

 all our mosses ; and we will now enter into detail concerning the most remarkable 

 in each division.* 



Beautiful indeed is a mossy hedge. It is full of nooks and comers, and hollows 

 and crevices. One nook is tapestried with minute transparent green feathers, 

 from each issuing a thread with a pointed scarlet Hd.* At the entrance of another 

 a root has descended from above, and the moss has made wreathen work around 

 the pillar, and formed a fretted arch, like the entrance to a temple. Here are 



' Hypnum splendens. ^ Sphagnum. 



3 If any scientific reader looks at these pages, I must entreat liis patience witli a classifioation 

 adopted solely for a temporary purpose, viz. the familiarising the unscientific with the "aspects 

 of mosses " before entering on the difficulties of structural examination. 



* Fissidenshry aides. " Mungo Park's moss." 



