Explanatory Notes on Mosses 495 



itself under a fairly high power of the microscope, he will find 

 much to interest him. Two species illustrating the very 

 diverse forms and fructification will be found in Stark, Plate 

 XX., the one a Jungermannia, foliose with globose capsule, 

 the other frondose, showing the very strange male and female 

 fructification of one of the Marchantiae. This species, Mar- 

 chantia polymorpha, and Lunulavia cnwiata are not uncommon in 

 waste places, in gardens, on garden pots, and in moist and 

 shady places. They well deserve the name of liverworts ; 

 they are dotted with pores of complicated structure, and bear 

 cups containing gemmae. 



EXPLANATORY NOTES ON MOSSES. 



The moss class ranks below its richer relations, the ferns, 

 and above its poorer ones, the seaweeds. Mosses have no 

 sap-tubes, and they do not bear true flowers. They reproduce 

 themselves by spores, which are not seeds, inasmuch as they 

 do not follow flowers. These facts are expressed by calling 

 a moss a " cellular cryptogam," but the term " cellular " is not 

 good, because all vegetables are cellular. What it is desired 

 to express is that they have no water-tubes. This want is 

 conveyed in the word non-vascular — that is, without vessels. 

 The word vessels, is, however, not good, since what are 

 meant are pipes or tubes, not " vessels " in the sense in which 

 tea cups and pitchers are " vessels." We will say, then, that 

 a moss is a plant made up of cells only ; which has no water- 

 pipes, is without flowers, and produces spores instead of seeds. 

 Inasmuch, however, as mosses produce fruit it is clear that 

 they have structures which take the place of flowers and 

 are to a certain extent like them. These spore-producing 

 structures are objects of great beauty, and it is by their aid, 



