MOSSES. 49 
it carpeted a pathway worn smooth by the feet of 
travellers winding along the shores of the lake, 
indicates that several species, known to occur in 
very few places in Europe, may be expected to 
be found on the south or western coasts of the 
British Islands. The Myurium belongs to a small 
group of ferns, mosses, and lichens, such as the 
Trichomanes radicans or transparent bristle-fern 
of Killarney, the Sticta macrophylla or broad- 
leaved lichen, and the ookeria lete-virens, a 
species of moss found sparingly in the south- 
west of Ireland, and common and abundant in 
Madeira and the Azores. Along with the Iberian 
flowering plants found in the same Irish locality, 
they bear witness to the fabled Atlantis, or 
hypothetical continent in the Atlantic, by which 
the three Macaronesian groups of Madeira, the 
Canaries, and the Azores were connected with 
western Europe and north-western Africa. There 
is a remarkable coincidence, regarding this hypo- 
thetical continent, between the facts of natural 
history and the traditions handed down on both 
sides of the Atlantic, and embodied in the works 
of Plato and Theopompus, and in the Teo Amoxtli 
of Mexico, as translated by the Abbé Brasseur 
de Bourbourg. One exceedingly singular custom 
called the couvade, in which the father is put 
to bed on the birth of a child, existing in both 
D 
