West : Ox Mosses. 



5 



produced by the spores usually has a short life, in others its duration 

 seems to be unlimited, as the apices go on growing and the oldest 

 parts die, each branch becoming thus a separate bearer of plants. 

 Mosses also multiply by detached buds, stolons, gemmae, and by the 

 rhizoids becoming protonema. Some species, like Funaria and 

 Phascum, persist perennially by means of their rhizoids. Pulytrichum 

 aloides and nanum produce gemmae from their rhizoids. Minute 

 tuberous buds, having reserve food material, are developed on the 

 root-hairs of Barbida muralh, Funaria hygrometria, and others, but 

 these rhizoids have been observed by Schimper to produce leaf-buds 

 without having recourse to a protonema, and in this way the male 

 annual plants of Dicramm undulatiim arise from the perennial clods of 

 the female plants, and fertilize the latter. The leaves of several 

 species of Ortliotrichum produce protonema, which are club-shaped in 

 O. phyllanthum ; the same phenomenon occurs in some other mosses. 

 In Buxbaumia — especially in B. aphylla — the marginal cells of the 

 leaves produce a protonema which envelops both them and the stem 

 with its filaments. Oncuphorus gtaucKt forms an interlaced mass of 

 protonema on the summits of the plants when the reproductive organs 

 are produced, and stop the further growth of the old plants. Bryum 

 an)iotinum produces branch buds which fall off and reproduce the plant, 

 and even the branches of some mosses detach themselves and set up 

 an independent existence. Then there are the gemmae produced by 

 Tetraphis and Aidacomnion androgynum, borne on a leafless elongation 

 of the stem, and in Tetraphis elegantly surrounded by a cup of leaves. 

 A detached leaf of Funaria has been known to produce a protonema 

 when kept moist. 



Articulated filaments, called paraphyses, surround the archegonia 

 in the female flowers; in the male flowers they surround the anther- 

 idia, and are sometimes spathulate, consisting in the upper part of 

 several rows of cells. The mature antheridia are stalked sacs, with a 

 wall consisting of a single layer of cells containing chlorophyll, 

 ■which assumes a red or yellow colour when ripe. In most mosses 

 they are club-shaped, but in Buxbaumia and Sphagnum almost round. 

 In Sphagnace(2 they open as in the hepaticae, and in all others by a slit 

 across the apex, through which the antherozoids are discharged in a 

 thick mucilaginous jelly, still enclosed in their mother cells ; the 

 mucilage dissolves in water and the antherozoids escape and swim 

 about. The mature archegonium consists of a large moderately long 

 base, supporting a roundish ovoid ventral part, which supports a long 

 thick neck often twisted on its axis. The wall of the ventral portion 



