412 The Side-fruiting Mosses. 



middle along the keel, and then the half leaves look like the whole 

 leaves of the next species, F. squamosa. They are of a yel- 

 lowish-green when young; olive or lurid green when old; 

 entire or obscurely denticulate at the apex, placed in a trifari- 

 ous manner upon the stem, and nerveless. The perichastial 

 leaves, as will be seen in the illustration, are obtuse and 

 jagged at the apex.* The capsules are sparingly produced, 

 except on the lower part of the older branches, where they are 

 numerous, each one immersed in its closely-sheathing peri- 

 chastium, and having the lid alone protruded, till it falls off, 

 when the blood-red peristome appears like a minute circlet, 

 fringing the tip of the little oval bundle formed by the capsule 

 and perichsetial envelope. The peristome is double, the outer 

 one consisting of sixteen equidistant, linear- subulate, very long- 

 teeth, much trabeculated internally, and cohering at the £,pex 

 in pairs; the pairs tortuous and incurved when dry, erect 

 below and spreading in the upper half when moist ; the inner 

 peristome is a beautifully tesselated cone, coloured like the 

 outer teeth, with sixteen salient angles and the same number 

 of vertical filiform cilia, united together by numerous hori- 

 zontal cross-bars, and " elegantly studded internally with pro- 

 jecting spurs," the remains of the fractured cellules whose 

 rupture has set it free. The lid is narrowly conical, acute, half 

 as long as the capsule, and wears a calyptra of nearly the same 

 size and shape. The spores are small and greenish. 



The name antipyretica was given to this species by Lin- 

 neeua in allusion to its being employed by the Swedes as an 

 ' ' insurance against fire ;" for the moss possessing the peculiar 

 property of not being inflammable, they fill up with it the spaces 

 between the chimney and the walls of their houses, by which 

 the both exclude the air and guard against accidents by fire. 



There are two varieties of this moss, the one we figuro was 

 culled from Longfords Lake, near Avcning, in Gloucestershire, 

 in the year 1857. Its stems are red and shining, showing 

 between and through the leaves, their graceful curvatures 

 making the leaves appear somewhat distant. In that Lake two 

 varieties grew, as it were, side by side, one more robust, the 

 other more slender, with less complicated leaves, and with 

 fasciculated, not spreading branches. 



FontimaUt sjwtwuoaa, or tho Al/pvue water-moss, has still 

 shorter stems, with more crowded, slender, fasciculated 

 branches, and crowded leaves of a dark lurid green, which are 



* To tho twinkling, twitching movement, in tho particles of chlorophyll in the 

 MIIuIn "I' V. mi/i/ii/ri lieu, allusion is made in the May number of this journal, at 

 j). 271. The tame moleottlar motion is often very conspicuous, under tho 

 microscope, in the folingp of water, or moisture-loving plants especially, as tho 

 Sjih'ifjni, Juiiynrm'iiinirr, etc., inhabitants of wH, and marshy places. 



