HANDBOOK OF BRITISH MOSSES. 



appearance, like that produced by Alectoria jubata or the pre- 

 valence of Usneoid Lichens, or the pendulous downy Tilland- 

 sice. A small number of species seem to affect the dung of 

 graminivorous or carnivorous animals, or other animal sub- 

 stances, the species peculiar to the one seldom if ever occur- 

 ring on the other. 



Mosses, like Phsenogams, are monoecious, dioecious, or poly- 

 gamous, and in some rare cases syncecious, and for the most 

 part definitely so, though a few instances occur in which the 

 position of the male and female fructification is not constant. 

 In monoecious or polygamous species the fruit is generally 

 produced abundantly ; but in those which are strictly dioe- 

 cious, especially where the male and female plants form dis- 

 tinct and often distant patches, it is frequently extremely rare, 

 from the difficulty arising to the impregnation of the young 

 female fruit. In such cases multiplication depends entirely 

 upon some subsidiary mode of reproduction, especially where a 

 single sex only, as is often the case, exists in a given district. 



Mosses belong to that higher and more important division 

 of Oyptogams which not only makes a near approach to 

 Pheenogams in habit, but which differs essentially from the 

 lower Cryptogams, as Fungals and Algae, in the more com- 

 plicated nature of the fructification, and the various phases 

 which the whole plant exhibits during the progress of evolu- 

 tion. 



In Ferns and their allies the result of germination is the 

 production of a cellular expansion of various forms, whether 

 globose or scale-like or irregular, whether more or less diffe- 

 rentiated and distinct from the spore itself or confluent with 

 it externally or internally or both, on which or within the sub- 

 stance of which, at least in the more normal cases, two organs 

 are produced of different sexes, the one of which, called an 



