MOSSES. 67 
the vegetable kingdom. How true it is, that 
things which we are apt to despise or overlook on 
account of their minuteness and apparent insigni- 
ficance, are not only full of lessons of beauty and 
wisdom, but are also made the means, in the 
hands of a kind Providence, of the greatest good 
to His creatures ! 
HEPATICAE OR SCALE MOSSES. 
The plants whose peculiarities have been de- 
scribed in the preceding pages are called Urn 
Mosses, their fructification being urn-shaped, fur- 
nished with teeth, and closed with a lid. There is 
another large class called Scale-Mosses, so closely 
allied to the true mosses that they are frequently 
confounded even by an educated eye. They are 
united together by connecting links. On Alpine 
rocks a genus of dark-brown, almost black mosses 
called Andrea occurs in wide-spreading tufted 
masses, which seems to combine the characters of 
both the urn and scale mosses. Its.capsule opens 
by four valves, thus resembling the four-valved 
spore-case of the Fungermannie or scale-mosses ; 
while it has the persistent lid, thé columella, and the 
characteristic foliage and habit of the true mosses. 
The two divisions of mosses also shade into each 
other in the broad, entire, nerveless leaves of the 
