MOSS. 
241 
MOSS. 
maternal love. 
Jean Jacques Rousseau, so long’ tormented by 
his own passions, and persecuted by those of 
other persons, soothed the later years of his' 
life by the study of nature: the Mosses in par¬ 
ticular engaged his attention. It is these, he 
would frequently say, that give a look of youth 
and freshness to our fields; they embellish 
nature at the moment when the flowers have 
left us, and when their withered stems are 
mingled with the mould of our plains. In fact, 
it is in winter that the Mosses offer to the eye 
of the botanist their carpet of emerald green, 
their secret nuptials, and the charming mysteries 
of the urns and amphorae which enclose their 
posterity. 
Like those friends whom neither adversity 
nor ingratitude can alienate, the Mosses, ba¬ 
nished from cultivated lands, take possession of 
waste and sterile spots, which they cover with 
their own substance, and gradually change into 
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