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Observ. XXI. _Of _Moss_, and several other small-vegetative Substances._
Moss is a Plant, that the wisest of Kings thought neither unworthy his
speculation, nor his Pen, and though amongst Plants it be in bulk one of
the smallest, yet it is not the least considerable: For, as to its shape,
it may compare for the beauty of it with any Plant that grows, and bears a
much bigger breadth; it has a root almost like a seedy Parsnep, furnish'd
with small strings and suckers, which are all of them finely branch'd, like
those of the roots of much bigger Vegetables; out of this springs the stem
or body of the Plant, which is somewhat _Quadrangular_, rather then
_Cylindrical_, most curiously _fluted_ or lining with small creases, which
run, for the most part, _parallel_ the whole stem; on the sides of this are
close and thick set, a multitude of fair, large, well-shap'd leaves, some
of them of a rounder, others of a longer shape, according as they are
younger or older when pluck'd; as I ghess by this, that those Plants that
had the stalks growing from the top of them, had their leaves of a much
longer shape, all the surface of each side of which, is curiously cover'd
with a multitude of little oblong transparent bodies, in the manner as you
see it express'd in the leaf B, in the XIII. _Scheme_.
This Plant, when young and springing up, does much resemble a Housleek,
having thick leaves, almost like that, and seems to be somwhat of kin to it
in other particulars; also from the top of the leaves, there shoots out a
small white and transparent hair, or thorn: This stem, in time, come to
shoot out into a long, round and even stalk, which by cutting transversly,
when dry, I manifestly found to be a stiff, hard, and hollow Cane, or Reed,
without any kind of knot, or stop, from its bottom, where the leaves
encompass'd it, to the top, on which there grows a large seed case, A,
cover'd with a thin, and more whitish skin, B, terminated in a long thorny
top, which at first covers all the Case, and by degrees, as that swells,
the skin cleaves, and at length falls off, with its thorny top and all
(which is a part of it) and leaves the seed Case to ripen, and by degrees,
to shatter out its seed at a place underneath this cap, B, which before the
seed is ripe, appears like a flat barr'd button, without any hole in the
middle; but as it ripens, the button grows bigger, and a hole appears in
the middle of it, E, out of which, in all probability, the seed falls: For
as it ripens by a provision of Nature, that end of this Case turns downward
after the same manner as the ears of Wheat and Barley usually do; and
opening several of these dry red Cases, F, I found them to be quite hollow,
without anything at all in them; whereas when I cut them asunder with a
sharp Pen-knife when green, I found in the middle of this great Case,
another smaller round Case, between which two, the _interstices_ were
fill'd with multitudes of stringie _fibres_, which seem'd to suspend the
lesser Case in the middle of the other, which (as farr as I was able to
discern) seem'd full of exceeding small white seeds, much like the
seed-bagg in the knop of a Carnation, after the flowers have been two or
three days, or a week, fallen off; but this I could not so perfectly
discern, and therefore cannot positively affirm it.
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