. Harper's young people . w that I knew something about their ways. Afriend who was interested in my studies promised to showme the way to a spot where they grew, and this Octoberday was set apart for the excursion. After leaving the street cars we turned down a side pathand entered a deep cut, and in another minute a greatwall of uneven rock and earth stood in front of us, cov-ered from top to bottom with the most exquisite clung close like a rich velvet mantle, ferns rearedtheir delicate fronds, tiny weeds fresh from the continualsprinkling of a stream of water which trickled ov
. Harper's young people . w that I knew something about their ways. Afriend who was interested in my studies promised to showme the way to a spot where they grew, and this Octoberday was set apart for the excursion. After leaving the street cars we turned down a side pathand entered a deep cut, and in another minute a greatwall of uneven rock and earth stood in front of us, cov-ered from top to bottom with the most exquisite clung close like a rich velvet mantle, ferns rearedtheir delicate fronds, tiny weeds fresh from the continualsprinkling of a stream of water which trickled over therock grew in all the little crannies, and close around aspring which had hollowed out a small basin for itself ina ledge of the solid rock grow the liverwort. Besides what I had seen before in the liverworts I nowfound that the leaves were spotted all over with diamond-shaped markings of a darker green, each of which had ;-,dot in the centre, and that they were covered underneath 372 HARPERS YOUNG PEOPLE. VOLUME Fig. 1.—LEAF. «, Pocket Disks; b, Seed Disks;c, Nest. 1 with a numberof white glassyhairs, which laidhold of the rock,and glued theleaves down sotightly that itwas very hardto loosen were three other kinds of outgrowths upon theleaves which I want to show you when we have done ex-amining the leaves themselves. Fig. 1, a, is a leaf which Ibrought home to draw for you; 6 is another from a placeclose by. Fig. 2 is a piece of the same leaf see the diamond-shaped spots plainly in this, with thelittle dot in the centre. Now I want to make you under-stand clearly the meaning of these spots and their centraldot. Just imagine that this irregular piece of leaf is a largelow house, only one story high, made up of quantities oflittle rooms placed side by side, and with no entries orpassageways between them. The under side of the leafis the floor of the house, the top is the roof, and thediamond-shaped spots all over the top are the roofs ofthe
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1879
