6 THE SPHAGNACEZ OR PEAT-MOSSES OF 
CHAPTER II. 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
Tue plants constituting the family Sphagnacee, and known as 
Peat-mosses or Bog-mosses, have long attracted notice from the 
ordinary observer by their peculiar aspect and habit, and have 
equally interested the microscopist by the beauty of their tissues, 
and exercised the botanist by the difficulty which attends their 
correct determination; the latter perhaps increased by the great 
variability of some species, and the uncertainty of the characters 
relied upon by various authors for the purpose of specific distinction. 
No group of plants is more clearly defined in structure, in 
general family likeness, and in the localities in which they are 
found, for all are essentially Bog-mosses ; yet as various true mosses 
are equally inhabitants of bogs, e. g. various Hypua, Aulacomnium 
palustre, Paludella, Meesea, &c., 1 prefer to term them more 
definitely Peat-mosses, since on them alone the first formation of 
peat largely depends, and the name accords with that long recog- 
nized by the Germans, whose Laudmoose or frondose mosses, 
Torfmoose or Peat-mosses, and Ledermoose, Livermosses or 
Hepatice, thus form one great Muscal alliance. 
Few persons can have traversed our moorlands without having 
had their attention attracted to the great masses of Sphagnum 
which adorn their surface—now in dense cushions of lively red— 
now covering some shallow pool with a vast sheet of light green, 
inviting it may be by its bright colour, but woe betide the inex- 
perienced collector who sets foot thereon, for the spongy mass 
may be many feet in depth, and he may run the chance of never 
reaching ¢erva firma again. 
The plants always grow in this aggregated fashion, for the 
stems are weak and fragile, and they thus afford each other 
mutual support; and this fragility requires us to deal gently with 
our collections if we would have good herbarium specimens ; the 
immense quantity of water they retain must be squeezed out 
carefully, and not by roughly grasping the tufts in the hand, other- 
