40 HANDBOOK OP BBITISH MOSSES. 



vegetables; and so, at length, in many instances, covering 

 a naked surface with vegetable soil. The minute seeds of 

 Rhododendra for instance, where Mnium punctatum abounds, 

 find a more genial place of growth in their tufts than in any 

 other locality where those lovely plants seem to be really at 

 home, as in the slate districts of Wales. 



This property, however, of clothing naked soils, or of intru- 

 ding where their presence is not desired, makes them often 

 extremely annoying in the garden, where it is desired to keep 

 gravel-walks trim and unsullied, or in pastures, where they 

 usurp the place of nutritive Grasses. In the former case 

 boiling water impregnated with salt, gas-water, or a solution 

 of some poisonous mineral, may be used with advantage ; in 

 the latter the brush-harrow, followed by good manure, will be 

 most likely to effect a cure. 



In an aesthetic point of view, it is scarcely possible to speak 

 of Mosses too highly. In elegance and delicacy of colouring 

 they are individually surpassed by few Cryptogams, especially 

 amongst the finer and more attractive kinds ; and taken col- 

 lectedly, they frequently give a tone to the colouring of rocks 

 and foregrounds which the eye can at once appreciate. Even 

 some of the smaller species, when in fruit and lighted up 

 en masse by a partial sunbeam, are exquisitely beautiful from 

 their red and olive tints. 



