58 HANDY BOOK OF 
was caused by rays of light concentrated by, and reflected 
from, the innumerable and inconceivably minute lenses of 
the leaves. 
Botanists who visit Derbyshire during their summer 
excursions, may find the Hypnum lucens, or Shining 
Feather-moss, in the shady recesses of Rowter Rocks, a 
mile or two north of Winster. It grows in different situa- 
tions, among woods, wet ditches, and on moist banks and 
rocks. 
Withering speaks of it as having trailing branches, egg- 
shaped, pointed, and flat ; leaves shining as if wet with 
dew ; fruit-stalks an inch and a half long ; capsules small 
for the size of the plant, somewhat oval, more or less 
nutant, dark brown; lid, spit-pointed; veil straight, sharp, 
whitish. 
It occurs to us that the mild golden green light in 
Argol's cave is emitted by some species of conferva unless, 
indeed, the shining Feather-moss is greatly deteriorated in 
size by its gloomy habitat. 
Luminous plants produce an inexpressibly pleasing effect 
in their lone and desolate growing-places. Counsellor 
Erhman spoke of them with enthusiasm, when, having 
descended into one of the Swedish mines, he saw those 
vegetable glow-worms gleaming along its walls, or spark- 
ling in some obscure recess. Caverns in the granitic rocks 
of Bohemia are often beautifully decked with a species of 
luminous moss ; and our own coal-mines occasionally exhi- 
bit a light sufficiently clear to admit of reading by its aid. 
But nowhere, perhaps, is the effect produced by vegetable 
phosphorescence so exquisitely beautiful as in the mines of 
Hesse, in the north of Germany, where the walls of tho 
air-galleries appear as if illuminated with a pale light, 
resembling that of moonbeams when stealing through 
crevices into some gloomy recess, from which all of vegeta- 
ble beauty is excluded. None, an looking on the fairy 
gleams that pervade the Hessian mines, could imagine for a 
