MOSSES. 51 
abundant with us on banks and trunks of trees, 
has a range of distribution equally wide. Being 
the most sportive of all mosses, it can adapt 
itself, with slight modifications of shape and 
structure, to almost every variety of conditions. 
In Madeira and Teneriffe it is the most abundant 
and sportive of mosses, covering the trunks of trees, 
especially of the laurel trees in the grand old 
evergreen woods of the central mountain range, 
with a most luxuriant drapery. A painter’s eye. 
would be delighted with the picturesque appear- 
ance of the trunks and boughs of the trees in the 
moist, dark ravines, cushioned thickly with this 
moss. The Neckera crispa, exceedingly abundant 
in our own subalpine woods, grows in great pro- 
fusion in the laurel forests of Madeira, especially at 
Ribeiro Frio, often entirely covering trunks and 
branches, and clothing whole trees in mossy 
drapery. Pterogonium gracile and Polytrichum 
‘uniperinum are also as common in all the 
Atlantic islands as in our own country. Two 
species of moss, the Astrodontium Canariense and 
Neckera intermedia, as far as known to us, are 
seculiar to the Atlantic islands ; while one species, 
che Glyphocarpus Webbii, has hitherto been found 
nowhere else than in Teneriffe, where it occurs in 
zreat abundance, covering the moist rocks with 
yroad cushions of a rich yellow hue. There are 
