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النشر الإلكتروني

Chapter the Eighth.

THE MOSSES.

I DARE say you have often noticed how gay the little mosses look in the winter time, when snow is on the ground, and the flowers have all hidden themselves beneath the earth, waiting for the spring to come, before they dare venture to peep forth. Every wall is covered with their bright green and yellow tufts, and they spread out their leaves, and push up their delicate urns, regardless of cloud and storm. But when summer comes, and the sun grows hot, the little moss dries up and withers; for though it will bear any amount of cold, it cannot live without a great deal of moisture. For some months it remains black and lifeless, until the damp and rain of autumn revive it, and make it bloom again as gay as ever.

If you ever picked up a moss, and examined it carefully, you would see that it has a kind of stem round which the leaves are arranged with the greatest nicety. The seeds are enclosed in a case

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or urn, called a capsule, and this capsule is borne on a slender stalk, which is longer or shorter, according to the species. When the moss is young, its urn is covered with a hood or veil, which a botanist would tell you was the calyptra. It rises to a point, and in one kind of moss is shaggy, and not very much unlike a thatched roof. The calyptra very soon falls off, and bye and bye the lid does the same.

The mouth of the urn is then exposed to view. In some mosses this is quite

naked, but in others it is furnished with a beautiful apparatus of little teeth, sometimes

and

in a single, and sometimes in a double row, these are called a fringe. It is a curious fact that the number of teeth increases only by four. Thus the smallest number is four, the next sixteen, then thirty-two, and then sixty-four. But no moss is known with any intermediate number.

The use of these teeth seems to be, to throw out the seeds at a proper time, for all weathers would not be suitable for them. When the atmosphere is damp, the little teeth close entirely over the mouth of the capsule, and keep the seeds safe within. But when it is fine and dry, the teeth spread wide open, and the seeds flow over the margin, and are scattered by the winds.

Nothing can be more perfect than the structure of the mosses, whether we consider their foliage, their capsules, or their delicate single or double fringe.

No part of the globe appears to be entirely without them, and they afford shelter to an immense number of insects, protecting them, lest they should be destroyed by the frosts of winter, or parched by the heats of summer, or decayed by the damps of autumn. So that we may be assured that not even the minutest vegetable has been made in vain.

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The sight of a little moss, growing in the depth of the wilderness, far away from any human habitation, was once the means of restoring the courage of Mungo Park, the famous African traveller.

The story is so familiar that you may have heard it many times, but yet it is so simple and touching, that I cannot forbear to relate it.

As Mungo Park was travelling in Africa, many hundred miles from his country and his friends, he was stripped and robbed by banditti, who went away and left him, quite forlorn and desolate. In his account of the adventure he says, "When the robbers were gone, I looked around me in amazement and terror. I found myself in the midst of a vast wilderness, naked and alone, surrounded with savage animals, and men still more savage. My spirits began to fail me: I considered my fate as certain, and that nothing remained to me, but to lie down and die. Just at this moment, I caught sight of a little moss blooming by my side. The whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, but its leaves and fruit were so delicate and beautiful, that I could not look at it without wonder and admiration.

"Can that Being, thought I, who planted,

watered, and brought to perfection this little moss in this lonely wilderness, look without pity and concern upon the sufferings of a creature formed after his own image? Reflections such as these would not let me despair. I started up, and forgetting both my hunger and fatigue, travelled on, quite sure that relief was at hand."

"Then wherefore, tell me, were they made,
All dyed with rainbow light,
All fashioned with supremest grace,
Up-springing day and night?

Springing in valleys green and low,
And on the mountain high,
And in the silent wilderness,
Where no man passes by.

To comfort man-to whisper hope
Where'er his faith grows dim,
For who so careth for the flowers,

Will care much more for him."

You have often read in your poetry books of "mossy beds where violets grow," and I dare say you have thought of some pretty nook or soft bank, shaded by trees in the green woods, where you may have spent your holiday, on some hot summer's afternoon. But the mossy bed I mean is a real couch, and one that can be carried from place to place.

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