l-: iiXS AX1) MOSSES. 
Ill 
it to a grove of fairy palm-trees, drooping gracefully over 
the moon-lit dancers, when they prank it merrily on the 
dewy sod. Beautiful and shining foot-stalks, resembling 
polished shafts, of a dark red colour, uphold capsules of 
equal brilliancy, among which the tiny people may float in 
and out, now lost in their dark shadows, and again re- 
appearing in the fidl beams of a cloudless moon. 
Linnasus gave to the Dark Mountain fringe-moss the name 
which now it bears. Botanists, in modern times, have re- 
B. DEALBATUM. Leaf Magnified. 
ferred it to the Mnium, Dicranum, and Tricliostomum tribes ; 
and, therefore, our readers will not be surprised if they rind 
it under either of the above heads. A recent and high 
authority has, however, resumed the appellation given by 
the Swedish naturalist. 
Unlike many of its family, which grow best on arid moun- 
tains, and walls- open to the sun, the Dark Mountain fringe- 
moss requires a soil, however meagre. It grows on stones 
thinly covered with mould, near Llanberris, in Carnarvon- 
shire, and in the West Riding of Yorkshire ; frequent in 
the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland; it affects also 
rocks on the hill-side, about fifty yards above Garthmelio, 
the seat of R. W. Wynne, Esq., Denbighshire. 
