1 74 The Phascams, or Earth Mosses. 



die, leaving the earth, a heritage for their progeny, and some- 

 what the richer for their having lived upon it. 



Growing on rather a sandy soil we have the Phascum 

 serratum. Its generic name is taken from (frvafciov, a bladder, 

 in allusion to the bladder-like capsule of the genus, and its 

 distinctive appellation serratum, from the serrated leaves, their 

 edges being toothed like a saw. But what are these branching 

 threads rising up between the leaves, looking like another kind 

 of moss intertwined with it ? Not so ; they are the young 

 conferva-like shoots of the plant itself, not yet developed into 

 maturity. In the first stage of vegetation all mosses have 

 analogous shoots, but they are more conspicuous in this and its 

 allies than in most other genera, and in P. serratum might at 

 first sight easily be mistaken for an intruder. It was, doubtless, 

 these confervoid shoots which caused Dickson and Smith to 

 give this species the name of Phascum stoloniferum — a stolon 

 being a long horizontal shoot from the base of a stem : though 

 Wilson seems to think that P. stoloniferum of Dickson is a 

 peculiar state of this species, " without the confervoid shoots 

 growing in a scattered manner, with larger, narrower, and more 

 evidently toothed leaves, and with creeping stolons." 



The serrated leaves are nerveless, lanceolate, and connivent, 

 i. e., all tending to a central point, embracing the capsule, which 

 is roundish-ovate, and sub-sessile, large in proportion to tho 

 plant, of a bright, reddish brown, and somewhat pointed. 



Authors differ on the subject of the inflorescence, but in all 

 the specimens we have examined we have found it monoicous, 

 the barren or male flower gemmiform or bud-like, and situated 

 at, or near, the base of the fertile flower ; the antheridia are 

 few, and without those succulent-jointed, hair-like bodies often 

 found growing mixed with the autheridia and archegonia, and 

 called pa/raphyses : but, as if to make up for the shortness of 

 the term of their existence, the spores are numerous. We 

 cannot say that wc have counted them, but Wilson says they are 

 about 200, yellowish, rough, and globular, as in most of the 

 species. 



As we have already said, the Phascums are without a deci- 

 duous lid, i lie sccd-vesscl therefore remains closed at tho top; but 

 when Hie spores are ripe they burst through tho fostering walls 

 that have thus far nourishod and protected them, and launch out 

 into the wide world, leaving a fracture on the side of the capsule, 

 which presents tho appearance of a chasm, not unlike a minia- 

 ture crater on ihe side of an extinct volcano. 



In the magnified figure given of the ruptured capsule, one 

 leaf seems blown aside by the spores in their forcible passage 

 out, and this was precisely the appearance under a high mag- 

 nifying power. 



