42 The Study of Mosses. 



THE STUDY OF MOSSES.* 



The most obtuse observer cannot wander through the country 

 •without admiring the beauty of mosses. In many places they 

 carpet the ground with a rich living pile of pleasant green, in 

 others they clothe the rocks, form a vesture for the tree-trunk, 

 enrich the parti-coloured thatch on the quaint old cottage, or 

 sedulously haunt the crevice of the wall. In a technological 

 sense they are not of much use, except in the condition of 

 peat ; perhaps simply because man is not yet sufficiently 

 instructed to know what to do with them : but in the world of 

 nature they play an important part, making their appearance 

 at times and under circumstances when higher forms of vegeta- 

 tion would not grow. Thousands and millions are the tons of 

 mineral and aeriform matter which they transmute every season 

 into their delicate tissues ; and when these decay, they produce 

 no inconsiderable amount of vegetable soil. They likewise 

 form the home and shelter for numerous minute insects, even 

 for rotifers ; and they tell their story of the wonderful ways of 

 life and organization not less strikingly than the widest 

 spreading, or the loftiest soaring, of the stateliest families of 

 trees. Like all low, or comparatively lowly members of the 

 organic world, they contribute most importantly to our know- 

 ledge of the laws, processes, and structures that distinguish 

 living beings. We cannot assert that they constitute a page of 

 nature's primer, and furnish elementary lessons in A, B, C, for 

 her human pupils to study ; as little was known, or could be 

 known of them, or of objects standing upon a similar or lower 

 grade of structural rank, until science had been considerably 

 advanced, and instruments like the microscope had been fabri- 

 cated to assist in the delicate and complicated labours of re- 

 search. The simplest form of life is not after all simple in any 

 Ordinary sense of the word. Wo talk of "unicellular plants 

 and animals," but Professor Karstenf tells us this is erroneous, 

 " owing to the complicated structure of the tissue cells which 

 cuter into tlio composition of developed organisms ;" and if we 

 mastered the structure of the cell, we should still be puzzled 

 bo account for the functions which it performs, some of which 

 wo know to be physical, while we call others "vital," without 

 attaching any precise or definite meaning to the term. 



Still, though nature's secrets lie always deep, we are 



* Ilandhook <>f British Mosses, comprising nil that aro known to bo Natives 

 of tho British Idee, liy the Ber. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S., author of 

 " Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany," " Outlines of Britiah Fungology," etc. 

 Lovell Reeve A, Co. 



t Sue Annals of Natural History, No. G7. 



