Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/884

 866 MOSSES oughly squeezed or partly dried it serves an ex- cellent purpose in the transmission of trees and plants by packing their roots in the spongy and elastic mass ; indeed for this purpose it is supe- rior to all other packing materials ; it may be made to contain just the requisite amount of moisture, and it does not readily decay. It is also much employed by gardeners as a me- dium in which to grow orchids and plants that are naturally inhabitants of bogs, and for these uses it is a regular article of trade. Some hypna retain their elasticity on being dried, and serve for stuffing pillows. The Laplanders use turfs of polytricha for mattresses. Little brooms are sometimes made of these mosses. In dense forests (in the northern hemisphere) the northern side of trees is usually more thickly covered with mosses than the other sides. Some fanciful medicinal qualities are attributed to a few kinds. The geographi- cal distribution of the mosses is very exten- sive ; scarcely any part of the earth's surface is destitute of them, from the polar regions to the equator. They constitute with lichens almost the only vegetation on the coast of the Polar sea, where the soil never thaws to a depth of more than a few inches. The north- ern seacoast of Siberia is an immense morass whose entire surface is covered with mosses. The schistose rocks of Spitzbergen, rising above the everlasting ice, are, according to Martens, covered with these plants. They enter largely into the flora of Greenland ; the loftiest Swiss Alps, and the volcanic scoriae of Iceland, afford abundant species. Montagne in his Sylloge exhibits species from almost every portion of the globe, and the various exploring expedi- tions find these forms of vegetation wherever they have visited. The earliest writer on the mosses who comprehended their structure was Micheli, who in 1729 described and depicted the most minute portions of their reproduc- tive organs, and seems to have understood their purposes. On the other hand, Dillenius (1741), Linnaeus (1753), and Adanson (1763) regarded the sporangium as analogous to the anther of the phanogamous plants. Schmiedel in 1760, and subsequently in his Icones Plantarum et Analyses Partium (l762-'97), described and figured the zoothecce of the hepaticce ; and, struck with finding them filled with a muci- laginous fluid analogous to that which fills the pollen grains, he considered them as male organs, and gave the name of female organs to the sporangia of mosses. Hedwig (Theoria Generationis, 1784) and other botanists now adopted the same view, until H. Mohl in 1833 showed that the spores of the hepaticce and mosses were developed exactly like the pollen grains, and that the ideas of Linnseus and others of that school were in a measure correct. We have seen, however, that the antheridia with their enclosed antherozoids seem to be essen- tial in the production of the sporangium and its contents. In the United States the mosses were perhaps first collected by Dr. Muhlen- berg, of Lancaster, Pa. He sent many Ameri- can species to Hedwig, and they were described and published in the Species Muscorum (Leip- sic, 1801). In 1813 Muhlenberg's Catalogus Plantarum America Septentrionalis appeared, in which he gives the names of more than 170 species. The value of this list is apparent, when it is known that his correspondence abroad was extensive and highly prized. Many of the species in Bridel's Bryologia Universa (Leipsic, 1826) were from contributions of Dr. Torrey of New York, who at that time had made ample collections of cryptogamic plants ; and mention is frequently made by the same author of the names of Cooley and Dewey, who likewise furnished specimens. Those of Newfoundland had been collected by Be la Pylaie. A synoptical table of the ferns and mosses of the United States was published in 1828 in the " American Journal of Science and Arts," vol. xv., by Dr. Lewis C. Beck. A list of the mosses of Massachusetts is appended to the second edition of Prof. Hitchcock's "Geo- logical Report " of that state. The mosses of the British possessions in North America were collected by Drummond, the author of Mutci Scotici, who accompanied Franklin in his second land expedition in 1825. These subsequently appeared in sets of mounted specimens pub- lished by William Wilson at Glasgow in 1828; they were choice and valuable. In the Bos- ton " Journal of Natural History " for 1845 (vol. v.) is a paper by John L. Russell on some spe- cies noticed by him in eastern Massachusetts ; and in Hovey's " Magazine of Horticulture and Botany " for 1847, vol. xiii., is a valuable list of White mountain species prepared by Wil- liam Oakes, who had made that region of New England his special study. In the catalogue of the plants of Cincinnati, Ohio, by Thomas G. Lea, are more than 80 species collected by him. In Agassiz's " Lake Superior, its Physical Char- acter, Vegetation," &c. (Boston, 1850), the mosses of that region are elaborated by Les- quereux. Dr. Darlington, in the second edition of his Flora Cestrica (Philadelphia, 1853), fur- .nishes a list of species detected within the lim- its of Chester co., Pa., and prepared by Thom- as P. James. The Musci Alleghaniemes were issued from Columbus, O., in 1855, in two fas- cicles (4to), consisting of 215 species and well marked varieties of mosses, and 177 species of hepaticce. Fifty copies only of this superb work were printed for private distribution among the friends of the author. These spe- cimens were collected by William S. Sullivant and Prof. Asa Gray, in a tour along the Alle- ghany mountains from Maryland to Georgia in 1853. A similar work from the joint studies of Lesquereux and Sullivant, consisting of 355 mounted specimens, and entitled Musci Bo- reali-Americani (Columbus, O., 1856), full of rich and well fruited species, and thus giving a view of the muscology of North America, furnishes ample materials for comparison. In the second edition of Prof. Asa Gray's " Man-