34 SEA MOSSES. 



of the plant you are making inquiries about, and you 

 find that these plants are in the genus Chmtomorpha. 

 Turning now to that, you will find an account of 

 the plant, such that you will not doubt you have 

 before you C. tortuosa. 



A second way of making the book and the plant 

 meet is to select a few common plants that the book says 

 may be found anywhere, and carefully noting the 

 description, and especially its habitat, with the best 

 image you can form of it in your mind, go to the 

 places where it ought to grow and there search for it 

 tiU you find it. For example, you will read in the 

 book that the Polysiphonia fastigiata grows upon the 

 ends of Fucus nodosus like little brcwn or black balls 

 as big as a walnut. Now go down and find some o 

 this Fucus and search till you find some with its 

 parasite on it. You wUl read that Ptilota elegans just 

 now referred to, grows common on the perpendicular 

 sides of cliffs and large rocks, under the curtain of 

 the overhanging "Rockweed." Go there and hunt till 

 you find it. You are told that many plants of the 

 species Cystoclonium purpurascens have little curling 

 tendril-like branches which twine around other plants; 

 go down to the shore and turn over the mass 

 which the retreating tide has left, tiU you find 

 ■some specimens of it, and you will not have to search 



