16 BRITISH MOSSES. 



at a distance, pleasanter is it to get there. The red of the wet, fallen oak leaves 

 is magnificent ; there the wet reflects the sky colour, and the leaf is deep purple. 

 Oh ! what it is to hear the dead leaves rustle under your feet ! Do you not 

 remember, when we were children, how each of us tried which could make the 

 most noise with them ? From under the red and purple we catch gleams of green, 

 like emeralds, — like that brighter, purer green yet of the chrysoprasus, which 

 tells us what the colouring of heaven will be ; but in the falling of the light upon 

 it, the deep, velvet shade, the brilliant lustre, that gleam of green moss is like a 

 humming-bird's breast. And as the feathers on a bird's breast, the feathers of 

 the moss lie over one another. Feather-mosses everywhere, like Mexican 

 hangings upon the tree-trunks, in mats about their roots, making the hedges 

 beautiful. Pull a tuft of feathers from this golden green mantle. 1 The plumy 

 things have bright red stems, branching off on each side and branching again, and 

 all are covered with amber, close set, shining scales ; and from the middle of the 

 main stem, not at its end, grows a brown, thread-like fruit-stalk, ending in what 

 is very like the head and beak of a bird. The feather mosses have always the 

 fruit on the sides of the branches. 



A type of a third form will be seen in any swamp or bog. It is a loose-made, 

 coarse-looking, whitish-brown moss, 2 which bears its fruit at the ends of short 

 branches ; the plant having much the form of a candelabra. Under the three 

 heads, therefore, of star, feather, and candelabra, we may, for the present, arrange 

 all our mosses ; and we will now enter into detail concerning the most remarkable 

 in each division. 3 



Beautiful indeed is a mossy hedge. It is full of nooks and corners, and hollows 

 and crevices. One nook is tapestried with minute transparent green feathers, 

 from each issuing a thread with a pointed scarlet lid. 4 At the entrance of another 

 a root has descended from above, and the moss has made wreathen work around 

 the pillar, and formed a fretted arch, like the entrance to a temple. Here are 



1 Hypnum splendens. 2 Sphagnum. 



3 If any scientific reader looks at these pages, I must entreat his patience with a classification 

 adopted solely for a temporary purpose, viz. the familiarising the unscientific with the " aspects 

 of mosses " before entering on the difficulties of structural examination. 



4 Fissidens bryoides. " Mungo Park's moss." 



