(64.) In most languages it will be found that these lower tribes of plants have originally had the same, or nearly similar, appellations; and that, although their names are different now, the difference often consists in a mere modification of the original term, and that all may be traced to a common root.

(65.) This etymological evidence it would not be right at present to dilate on; but one example may not be irrelevant, to show the general impression which their most obvious characters are calculated to produce.

Our word moss (which the Normans gave us for the older reet,) is derived immediately from the Gallic mousse, a term of exactly similar meaning, when applied to plants, but which also signifies froth or lather, and is itself a derivation of mou, soft or loose, like the foam of the sea or vesicles of lather; analogous to our must or wort, given to fermenting liquors, and to various similar plants. Hence also sea-weeds, many of which are called seafroth, sea-foam, sea-membranes, &c., as already shown, are called by the French mousses de mer, or sea mosses, the musci marini of the older writers, the ẞovov @axárov of Dioscorides and Pliny. Furthermore, fungi, or mushrooms, are named mousserons, mossallies; which is, perhaps, a contraction of mousseronde, or round moss, i. e. soft or puff balls.

(66.) This softness of texture and cellular formation seems to have given names to almost every section. Thus, mouldiness or mustiness is called moississure and mucor; mildew, like our milddew, serein and sideratio, adverting to its supposed deposition from the atmosphere, or belief that the affected plants were star-struck; mucedo, muceo, and mucus, are of nearly similar import to each other, and to our muck or slime; just as must in must-iness, and mush in mush-room, are but corruptions of moss, or mousse. Hence the whole series may be well associated under the common names of musts or mushes, or mush, i. e. moss-allies, technically Mycaffines: their connexions are already intimated by many of their names, such as muscus, a moss; muces, mousseron, or mouceron, a mushroom; mousse de mer and ßpúov taláσowov, sea-weeds. Mycinema, a doubtful articulate flag, Cenomyce, and Bæomyces, genera among the lichens, with various others, show a similar affinity to be recognized by other people and in other languages, besides by ourselves and in our own.

FERNS, OR FILICES.

(67.), Linnæus, who viewed nature with the kind affections of a philosopher, and the warm imagination of a poet, gave to the ferns (Filices) the figurative name of Novaccola, or new settlers; and no synonyme could more happily express their habits and general importance. For barren tracts are colonized by ferns long before many other tribes could vegetate thereon; and on sterile soils, where other plants would perish for want of food, the hardy ferns find sustenance enough; consequently, in such situations they flourish and abound, unmolested by loftier and more luxuriant shrubs and trees.

(68.) Ferns are truly colonists, and to fit them for the migrations they are destined to perform, it would seem as if nature, even while developing their organs of vegetation, and giving them both shrubby and arboreous stems, had considerately restrained an equivalent evolution of the reproductive system, lest they should be encumbered by weighty seeds in their successive and continued transits over large tracts of land, and in crossing extensive seas.

Hence, instead of elaborate fruits and seeds, ferns, with the stems and nearly the foliage of palms, have spores little differing

from those of mushrooms and of mosses.

Like them, they are

most prolific, for a single frond, and one fern bears many fronds, has been computed to produce upwards of a million spores.

(69.) Like the musts and their allies, so minute are the reproductive spores of ferns that their existence was even for a long time doubted, and before microscopes exposed them to our sight, this belief was common, and many references are made to it in our older writers. Shakspeare, in allusion to this then popular opinion, observes, "we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible."

The final cause of this reduced development appears to be, that such dust-like spores should be easily transportable from place to place; and hence it is that barren heaths, and coral rocks, and new made islands, raised probably by submarine volcanoes, after that lichens and mosses have first subdued the sterility of stone, are colonized by ferns, the heralds of a more luxuriant vegetation, and harbingers of plants more immediately subservient to the purposes of man. And not only is such the course which nature now pursues in the conversion of barren into fertile soils, but geology informs us that such was the scheme of her primæval operations in preparing the earth for the reception of man; for, from the strata in which ferns are found, it is more than probable that they preceded and prepared the way for the introduction of many other vegetables, for the higher animals, and for the human race.

(70.) The peculiar characteristics of the several groups of mosslike, jointless, and jointed ferns, must, from the limits to which an introductory sketch is of necessity confined, be reserved for subsequent explanation; but this need not be regretted, for, as the illustrations successively become more and more familiar, they will of course require, in this bird's-eye view, a less and less elaborate description, and for some a mere nominal reference will probably suffice.

(71.) Hence, the grasses and the sedges, the lilies and the palms, the pines, &c., although much more important plants, as ministering more immediately to the comforts and conveniences of man, will, from their being so much more familiar to all, require far less descriptive detail, than the lower classes of mosses, flags, and fungi; many of which are comparatively so little known, and which seemed, therefore, to demand in this preliminary conspectus, the most particular introduction.

D.

GRASSES, OR GRAMINA.

Saccharum officinarum, the sugar cane; one of the grasses.

A. An entire plant diminished. B. Spikelet of flowers. c. A flower
separate. D. Ditto, opened to shew the stamens and pistils.

(72.) The grasses and sedges, though in some features similar to the shave-grass ferns, are as characteristically distinguished by the higher development of their organs of reproduction, as the ferns are by that of their organs of nutrition. In this class it is, that true flowers are first observed, and the fruit no longer developed as spores, but in the form of grains. Hence they have been named by some botanists, in reference to their fruit, Granifera; by others, referring to the husks within which their flowers are found, Glumacea; and by others again, from their stalks, which are called straws or culms, Culmiferæ.

(73.) The grain-bearing, husk-flowered, or straw-stalked plants, of the Botanist, are the grasses and sedges of the farmer. But as these, including in the first-named the cereal species or corn, can no longer be referred to the single genus Gramen, GRAMINA should either become the name of the whole order, or, should this seem objectionable, they might be called collectively SEGETES, or Grassedges, (Gracarices,) thus avoiding the periphrases Gramina et Carices, Grasses and Sedges; Plantæ Glumaceæ, P. Graniferæ, P. culmiferæ, and so forth.

(74.) The grasses pass by the reeds and canes to the palms, the rushes and the lilies; the Palmæ et Lilia of the Linnæan scheme; both of which are included in the Palmares of our scale.

A. Areca catechu. B. Musa paradisiaca. c. Agave geminiflora.

(75.) This class, Palmares, contains some of the most curious, splendid, and majestic plants existing, which Linnæus called the Princes (principes) and Patricians (patricii), while he denominated the grasses the Plebeians (plebeii) of the vegetable kingdom. The tulip, iris, orchis, and banian types are the pride of our gardens and conservatories; and the palms, although insignificant when grown in our largest houses, still shew, even in confinement, what majestic plants they must be when flourishing unrestrained in the wild luxuriance of desert nature: for some, with erect stems, attain the height of nearly 200 feet; and others, that are climbing palms, are found of 500 feet in length.

(76.) The three classes forming this, the second region of the vegetable reign, include plants possessing a very peculiar and characteristic structure; which, although pervading all, is thought to be (though, perhaps, not altogether correctly) more decidedly developed in the palms, than in the arboreous ferns, the grasses, the sedges, or any of the other sections.

(77.) This structure will hereafter be fully explained, but even now the fact may be enunciated, that anatomical investigations,