2 HANDBOOK OP BRITISH MOSSES. 



eluded in the word fipvov, though there is probability in its 

 favour ; and therefore, while the term Muscologia has been 

 objected to as a barbarous word, consisting partly of Latin and 

 partly of Greek, Bryologia has scarcely fared better, though 

 it appears unobjectionable except in the eyes of hypercriticism. 



The true Mosses, however, when accurately examined, are 

 very distinctly separated by habit and character from other 

 vegetable productions which are confounded with them, — ap- 

 proaching indeed nearer to the Liverworts than other plants, 

 though distinguished even on a superficial view from the more 

 conspicuous of these, as the cup-bearing Marchantia, which 

 is so common on our shady walks in the garden, or which, to 

 the gardener's annoyance, so often runs over the soil of his 

 flowerpots, — by the absence of everything like a scaly habit, 

 and the definite leafy axis; while they are separated from 

 the leafy species of Jungermannia, not only by their urn- 

 shaped and almost universally entire sporangia, but by the 

 very different character of the foliage, for the leaves very rarely 

 assume anything approaching the eccentric outline which is 

 common in the more moss-like Liverworts ; while if we de- 

 scend to minuter points, there is the absence of all admixture 

 amongst the spores of spiral threads, even in the few indi- 

 viduals which have a sporangium split into four or more equal 

 lobes, after the manner of Jungermanniee. Another less obvi- 

 ous character consists in the different nature of the cellular 

 product of the germinating spores, which in Mosses consists 

 of more or less branched threads, with the single exception of 

 the genus Sphagnum, in which it is scaly, and resembles the 

 type which prevails in the Liverworts (Plate 1, fig. 1) . 



As regards general appearance, Mosses form either patches 

 consisting of numerous distinct individuals, or variously-sized 

 tufts, with simple or branched stems varying from less than a 



