68 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
shining Hookeria (H. lucens), one of the loveliest 
of our native mosses occurring sparingly and 
locally on moist banks, in shady woods, and in the 
entire nerveless flat leaves and stems of the Flat 
Feather-moss (Hypuum complanatum), one of the 
commonest of all mosses on the trunks of trees, 
There are upwards of a hundred species of scale 
mosses indigenous to Great Britain and Ireland, 
some of which are so small as to be scarcely: 
Fic. 2. —JUNGERMANNIA Die nnias 
visible, and others much larger than any of the 
true mosses. With the exception of a few promi- 
nent species, which are found in every moist wood 
and on every shady rock, they are somewhat local 
and limited in their distribution, many of them 
being remarkably rare, and confined to remote 
and isolated localities. The greatest number of 
species occurs in the tropics; and nowhere do 
they luxuriate so much as in the dark woods and 
