47 



to send out a tubular shoot, which, as it lengthens to form a 

 rootlet, becomes divided by transverse partitions. Another 

 shoot runs along the surface of the ground, and soon divides 

 into two branches, which subdivide again and again, until, 

 mingling with the similar branches from other spores, a felted 

 mass of green hairs is formed. The next step in the building 

 up of a moss is seen when small protuberances make their 

 appearance on these hairs. Whilst these nodules are develop- 

 ing into buds, they are also sending minute rootlets down 

 into the soil. The buds lengthen, and soon assume the 

 character of a growing stem, clothed with leaves, and in due 

 time terminated by the shaggy cap, which we saw on the 

 parent plant, with the spore-urn beneath it. 



In the Bog Mosses {Sphagnum) there is a slight difference, 

 for instead of the bursting spore producing a slender thread 

 it broadens out to a little green scale, like a tiny liverwort, and 

 from notches in its margin produces the buds which ultimately 

 grow into the complete sphagnum plant, crowned by a number 

 of the pretty red capsules, which in this order are always 

 globular, and with the peristome entirely wanting. 



Sometimes we may find specimens of the Hair Moss in 

 which the summit of the stem does not bear a spore-capsule ; 

 instead, it ends in an expansion of pale-coloured leaves, which 

 assume the form of a rosette. These particular leaves are 

 very short and broad when compared with the lower leaves ; 

 there are several rows of them, and those of each succeeding 

 circlet are smaller, until we reach the centre, where instead of 

 leaves there are several club-shaped bodies called antheridia. 

 These, when mature, are filled with a mucilaginous fluid, in 

 which are an enormous number of little cells. The summit of 

 the antheridium splits across, and the fluid with the cells pours 

 out. Individually examined, these cells are seen each to con- 

 tain a minute coiled-up organism, which may be roughly 

 likened, as regards form, to a tadpole with a tail of great 

 length ending in two long cilia. By the constant lashing of 

 this tail, it frees itself from the mother-cell in which it origin- 

 ated, and swims through the surrounding fluid. 



The history of the spore-capsule is, shortly, as follows. 



