MOSS. 
241 
MOSS. 
MATEHIfAl EOTE. 
jEAif JAcauEs Rousseatt, 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 particular 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 amphorse which enclose their 
posterity. 
Like those friends whom neither adversity nor_ 
ingratitude can alienate, the Mosses, banished from 
cultivated lands, take possession of waste and sterile 
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