WINTER SKETCHES. 20I 



heads. Even these tiny stalks can not come forth 

 without their mother's notice. The bright-green 

 velvet cushions of Ccrdtodon} as soft and almost 

 as regular in form as those in the boudoir, have a 

 pretty effect on the shelves of the gray rocks. 

 Some of them already are fairly bristling with 

 young pedicels and look as if they were closely 

 set with bright-red pins, with green, oblong heads. 

 Some of these tufts show no signs of fruiting. 

 Probably they are the sterile clumps ; for all of 

 the mosses have two kinds of flowers, or organs, 

 analogous to those of the higher orders of plants. 

 Some kinds have their pollen-bearing flowers, 

 or antheridia, and the pollen-receiving flowers, or 

 pistilidia, on separate stems or tufts ; while other 

 species have them on the same stem, but not on 

 the same receptacle. If one with the sharp and 

 searching eyes of the microscope should look well 

 in among the leaves of these apparently barren 

 cushions, he would no doubt see little club-shaped 

 ruptured sacs, 'from which have escaped certain 

 minute bodies, which are nearly related to the pol- 

 len grains in common anthers, and which fertil- 

 ized these succulent spore cases while they were 

 yet young, tender cell masses hidden among the 

 leaves, before they had lifted themselves on their 

 high pedicels. These are the only kinds of flow- 



1 A horn and tooth, in allusion to the teeth of the fruit-cups 

 which have little knots or lumps, like a goat's horn. 



