2 HANDY BOOK OF 
singing through the valley, in rocky lanes, and far tip the 
precipitous sides of old stone quarries on the village 
common. 
Oh ! the modest "beauty of those mosses ! They rise 
before my mental view in all their variety and vividness 
visions of by-gone days ! I well remember every stone and 
rill, all brakes and glens, where best they grew ; one deep 
lone vale especially, beside the old road that led from 
Stroud to Cheltenham, where Tradition lingers with her 
haunting tales, telling that fierce Danes and Saxons con- 
tended there in mortal fray and hence its dolorous name 
of Dudcombe : but a lovelier spot the sun, perhaps, never 
shone upon ; with its streams and trees, its sunny spaces 
covered with short herbage, and its wild rocky banks, 
where huge masses of lichen-dotted stones jutted forth 
among ferns and brambles. 
Botanists speak much concerning the Poppy tribe. They 
point to the head while growing, and the rigid curvature 
in the upper part of the stem, which gives it a position 
impenetrable by rain or moisture. But not less wonderful 
is the formation of the common Hair-moss (PolytricJnun 
commune), which grew profusely beside our streams, occa- 
sionally on the summit of high hills ; for such plants as 
affect marshy localities abound also on places where clouds 
settle, from which they derive sufficient humidity for the 
purposes of vegetable life. It is found therefore far up the 
Lapland Alps, in company with others of its kind, on the 
verge of perpetual snow, and in the desolate wilderness of 
Lychselle Lapland, among woods or beside torrents, spread- 
ing like a carpet over dry open spaces, the resort of rein- 
deer. Many a Lapland family, who perambulate from place 
to place during the short-lived summer, seek out spots 
abounding with the Great Hair-moss, and it forms for them 
both bed and bedding. They trace out a circumference with 
their knives, and readily separate the tangled roots from 
the meagre soil on which they grow ; this done, they spread 
