APPENDIX. 
MOSSES AND HEPATICA. 
THERE is little in the general aspect of Oxfordshire to commend it 
at first sight to the notice of students of the smaller Cryptogamia. A 
universal prospect of high cultivation, with a general absence of rocks, 
waterfalls, heaths or extensive woods, suggesting little hope of mosses 
for the seeker; and it must be admitted that closer inspection will 
for the most part only confirm the unfavourable impression he would 
have formed. During the last thirty or forty years too the increase of 
drainage and cultivation has continued at an accelerated pace, and 
many places once yielding good botanical prospects have been destroyed. 
Shotover, the famous haunt of Oxford naturalists, has suffered great 
deterioration, though a little yet remains; Bullingdon Green, once free 
and open, has been ploughed and enclosed; the adjacent bog, so rich 
in flowers and mosses a quarter of a century ago, is drained and yields 
not much now but a wretched crop of bad corn and worse potatoes. 
Of Wychwood Forest little is left and that little constantly diminishing, 
many acres of pleasant woodland having been turned into a desert of 
naked fields intersected by equally naked and very ugly stone walls, 
and everywhere similar processes have been more or less actively going 
on; nor has the builder’s assistance been wanting, many old botanising 
grounds being now covered with houses. Moreover the air of the region 
except in rainy autumn or mid-winter is too dry to promote the growth of 
the moisture-loving tribes of mosses. 
Still there is much of interest remaining, and when summer with 
its flowers has gone by, plenty of work exi8ts for those who choose to 
seek it about roadside walls, hedges, woods and other localities, with which 
to fill up the interval from October to May, and though many botanists 
are apprehensive of the supposed difficulty of the study of mosses this 
difficulty will be found to diminish when the subject is resolutely ap- 
proached, and the pursuit will appear full of interest and satisfaction. 
Microscopes of high power and complex structure are altogether un- 
necessary ; a simple instrument of moderate magnifying capacity is all 
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