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Cryptogams or Flowerless Plants — Musci. 
closed by a lid (operculum), which usually separates when mature by transverse dehiscence. In the exceptional 
Tribe Andrese the sporange is destitute of columella and operculum, and opens by 4 or 8 vertical valves to liberate 
the spores. Mouth of the sporange naked as in Gymnostomatous Mosses or fringed with a single or double row of 
separate or trellised teeth (peristome ). 
REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS of two kinds, viz., antheridia and archegonia, sheathed by involucral leaves ; either 
occurring together or upon different parts of the same plant or upon different plants. The ANTHERIDIA are 
membranous sacs liberating when mature numerous microscopic cellules each containing a spiral motile antherozoid 
analogous to the antherozoids of Ferns. ARCHEGONIA flask-shaped, containing an embryonal cell at the base which 
is rendered capable of developing a sporange, with its stalk, by contact of the antherozoids. The sides of the 
archegonium carried up by the growing sporange ultimately form the calyptra which sheaths the sporange until it is 
mature. 
USES, &c.—Excepting for purposes of packing, bedding, stuffing crevices of timber buildings in Northern 
countries and the like, Mosses are without any direct economic application. Bog-moss (Sphagnum), which forms the 
great mass of the vegetation of the more saturated portions of bogs, is’much employed in horticulture to retain water 
as a sponge around delicate roots and cuttings. 
Very nearly allied to Musci is the small Order HEPATlCiE, some genera of which form, in respect of habit, a 
transition to the cellular Natural Orders of lower grade in which there is no distinction of stem and leaf. Hepaticse 
consist, as.to their vegetative portion, either of slender moss-like stems clothed with 2-rowed (distichous) leaves, or 
of a spreading irregularly-lobed green expansion (thallus) destitute of leafy organs as in Liverworts (. Marchantia ). 
In respect of the reproductive organs Hepaticae differ from Mosses in the sporanges containing, intermixed with the 
spores, slender cells each enclosing a spiral filament (elater). In Liverwort the sporanges result as in Mosses from 
the fertilisation of an archegonium by an antherozoid, and are borne upon the under side of a radiately-lobed disk 
which is supported by a slender stalk. This genus is further remarkable in the complex form of the stomates or 
pores in the epidermis which communicate with the interior of the thallus, as well as in the neat provision for the 
development of bulbels or buds, which are contained at first in minute cup-shaped involucres, but ultimately scattered 
and each capable of reproducing the plant. 
