INTRODUCTION. 



23 



conjecture that the frequent barrenness of mosses is intended to be a check upon 

 their otherwise too great increase ; and, as such, a merciful provision for ourselves. 

 For their extreme hardiness of constitution, their combined sensitiveness to 

 atmospheric influence and insensibility to blight, the small nourishment they 

 require, and the multiplicity of their seeds when these are produced, are the 

 causes of their universal distribution ; a moss thriving anywhere. But just as they 

 bless and beautify and clothe the waste places of the earth, the growth of mosses 

 over cultivated lands would be in the highest degree injurious. There is, there- 

 fore, probably in this way restraint put upon their increase. Intended and fitted 

 to fill their own place in creation, the very causes for which they thrive on the 

 barren land might make them too ready to overspread also the tilled soil, 

 and they therefore are bidden to stop ; but some idea of the care taken that they 

 shall fill and keep this place we may derive from the consideration that all the 

 variations of form, number, colour, condition when dry, even to the twisting of 

 the fruit-stalk, constitute real and abiding differences between one species of moss 

 and another; the leaf, so minute that it can hardly by the eye alone be seen, is 

 guided in its waving by the Hand which metes out the heavens ; the moisture 

 needful for its nourishment is taken account of in the measuring of the waters ; 

 the atom of green dust is directed to the speck of earth best fitted for its growth, 

 by Him who led and clothed and fed His people Israel for forty years through 

 the wilderness. 



