F;;;;XS AMJ MO- . 101 
OCTOBER. 
" Long work it were, 
Here to account the endless progeny 
Of all the weeds that bud and blossom there ; 
But so much as doth need must needs be counted here.'' 
SPEXSKU. 
WELCOME Nature's handmaids, small mosses, which look 
green and cheerful when summer's flowers have ceased to 
deck the meads and banks, and all joyous birds are flown to 
distant climes ! Ye have laboured much, yet willingly, in 
the spring-tide of your time, and now ye sit contentedly on 
the once stern and herbless declivity, mantled by your active 
ministry with ferns and flowers. I well remember your" 
bleak growing place ; no joyous insect ever settled on its 
surface, no industrious bee sought there her honey harvest 
flowers there were none, neither had the smallest fern struck 
its tiny roots into the fissures of the rock. At length came 
one of your persevering sisterhood, making a loving compact 
with sunbeams and soft showers, with nimble gases an<i 
wandering zephyrs ; and when each one had kindly lent his 
aid, 'and that small moss, forming to herself a home, wns 
securely settled, others of her companions hastened to dwell 
beside her. Now, within the fissuies, and on rough crags 
up the stony sides of giant rocks, and nestling on their 
summits, grow green mosses. Look upon them, passer-by 
nay more, gather a few, and carefully examine their com- 
ponent parts. Forest trees do not present a greater or aaoro 
marked variety ; nor is the stateliest oak or pine, the bread-- 
fruit or cocoa, the banian or the cinnamon, morewondrously 
adapted to their respective habitats, or more curiously fur- 
nished with air and sap vessels for all the functions of vege- 
table life, than these neglected mosses. 
